‘Like a Dog’: The Origins of Barack Obama’s Petulance

Obama had served in the Senate for about two years, when he announced his candidacy for the presidency. That too is rare, but not unprecedented; what was singular was his claim that he was a bipartisan uniter, when, in fact, he compiled the most partisan voting record among 100 senators of either party. He sponsored no major legislation; his memoirs reflected others’ interest in him, not his own record of lawmaking. His themes were winning over adherents rather signature accomplishments.

The exotic name, the mixed racial heritage, and the street cred cool, juxtaposed to the nerdy professorial sermonizing, trumped the need to author or repeal significant laws or create lasting community institutions — or to leave any footprint of achievement at either the University of Chicago, the Illinois legislature, or the U.S. Senate. Running for office or courting appointments or angling for promotions seemed divorced from worry about doing anything when such wishes were granted. Obama’s tragedy is that there is nothing left he can run for, no further adulatory confirmation for just being Obama. Performance for the first time in his life is now all that counts.

Names and images matter in America. Just as a hypothetical moderately attractive blond but empty “Pam Hill” would not earn the high profile accorded to her double-ganger Paris Hilton of similar non-achievement, so too a Barry Dunham does not catch on in the progressive political world in the manner of a Barack Obama.

Nobel Peace Prizes traditionally are awarded to those after a lifetime of activism, often after some exposure to danger, or at least a sizable body of inspirational literature. Obama simply had no such record. He is our collective Peter Sellers of Being There. To paraphrase the embarrassed awards committee, Obama was granted the prize more on his symbolic potential, rather than on the basis of anything he did. Like hundreds of other liberal elites, the Nobel committee seemed to draw more personal fulfillment and satisfaction for bequeathing the award than did Obama in receiving it.

Yes, Race Was a Factor

Throughout the Obama presidential odyssey, an enthralled media variously dubbed him a “god,” confessed to tingling sensations when he spoke, and in vicious fashion turned on any politician who tried to question Obama’s actual record of achievement — whether Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin.

There is no need to pursue the journalistic malfeasance that allowed the president of the United States to be inaugurated without any real past scrutiny. Suffice to say that any future presidential candidate who promises to cool the planet and lower the rising seas will be laughed out of contention — even if he puts “yes, we can” into Latin on his pre-presidential seal.

Race was a factor. Here the left is correct in assessing its importance in evaluating Obama, although not quite in the way they think. At various times, a disturbing racialist trope emerged that suggested white liberals were enthralled almost solely by Obama’s mixed heritage, his diction, and comportment. Not to mention the overall sense that he was a moderate and charismatic African-American that knew precisely how to put anxious well-meaning folks like themselves at ease — and that this was simply not true of the majority of other African-American politicians, and that this in and of itself would suffice.

Promoting Obama offered blanket exemption from even the suggestion of prejudice — a sort of cheap flip of a “get out of jail free” card than ensured liberal elites could otherwise pursue their sheltered lives without guilt or worry over demands for daily interaction with most African-Americans. Elect Obama, worry not what he did — and at last live guilt-free lives in seclusion.

That is a serious charge that should not be made lightly, but the emphasis on Obama’s diction, pigment, and appearance — rather than his actual record — is not my own.

Joe Biden, for example, blurted out, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Apparently Biden meant that the antithesis of Obama’s profile — a non-mainstream African-American, who spoke a southern patois and who did not appear bright and clean and handsome — most definitely was not to be a storybook candidate and perhaps likely to put off white liberals like Biden. (Note that Biden did not mention any particular achievement of Obama, merely the impression that he made on those like himself.)

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was perhaps cruder even than Biden. It was reported that he had characterized Obama as a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Again, Reid’s implied antithesis — a dark-skinned African American who spoke with a Negro dialect all the time — would probably offend progressives like Reid. (Note here that Harry Reid seems to have been the first serious observer to publicly describe one of Obama most off-putting characteristics — the near cynical fashion in which he turns on not slightly, but entirely, different cadences and intonations to cater to particular crowds.)

Progressive Condescension

In short, Obama seems aware that a particular cadre of influential white liberals has traditionally accorded him deference not warranted by actual achievement, but rather by his projection of a progressive persona, as crudely outlined by a Biden or Reid — and that this by now is a normal course of events rather than an aberrant experience. Hence his anger that all that has at last begun to end.

It is hard to think that an Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School, would have gushed over the rather undistinguished legal record of Barack Obama, had he been either a well published but obese white Harvard Law graduate, or a conservative African-American antipode to the Biden-Reid stereotype, perhaps in the Clarence Thomas mold. After all, it was not just Obama’s appearance or skin color or cadences that so impressed Biden and Reid and won over liberal Americans, but his politics as well that earned him an exemption not accorded even to an equally professional appearing Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice.

Now What?

But enough speculation over motives for the origins of Obama’s strange and growing petulance. All that matters for the country is that the current president of the United States seems surprised that as our chief executive he is earning scrutiny not previously accorded him — and that he finds that demand for accountability both exasperating and abjectly unfair. Thus this week’s latest “like a dog” whine.

For some reason, Obama believed that those who expected after his campaign promises a real upturn in the economy, or fiscal responsibility, or inspired foreign policy would be satisfied, as they had in the past, merely with soaring rhetoric and superficial reassurance. When they were not, and voiced such displeasure, as ingrates they had supposedly reduced Obama to canine-like status.

There is no need to add that abroad an Ahmadinejad, Assad, or Putin does not care a bit for the supposed personal chemistry or ethnic profile of Obama. Whether he was “clean” or not would be an absurdity to them. We sense only that those authoritarian sorts seem so far to like the idea that Obama speaks ambiguously about his country’s past and future, and appears more comfortable in pondering alternatives than making decisions.

Given all that, it is understandable both why America is very worried about what it has wrought — and why Barack Obama is miffed and lashes out.

You would too if both accountability and criticism were novel experiences at 49.

374 Comments, 182 Threads

VDH:
“The wonder is not that Obama is angry at criticism, but why he is so surprised in a weird ‘how dare they?’ fashion.”

Perfectly understandable that The Alleged Hawaiian is at last learning that not everyone loves him as deeply as he loves himself.

And, no, I don’t think people talk about him like he’s a dog. Generally speaking, people tend to LIKE dogs.
It seems that the more that folks get to know Barack Hussein Obama, the less “enchanted” they seem to be with him.

“Given all that, it is understandable both why America is very worried what it has wrought—and why Barack Obama is miffed and lashes out.

You would too if both accountability and criticism were novel experiences at 49.”

Yeah…gee. Cry me a river little man.
He’s had everything in his adult life handed to him on a plate, and now he’s buggin’ that he’s expected to live up to his own billing.

About the only thing that remains to be seen is how the office of POTUS will continue to break this man.
And whether he’ll have the brains and the strength of moral character to realize the crucible that he’s in.

I’ve foretold for over 18 months that I don’t think BHO is going to seek a second term.
I have enumerated various reasons why I think this will be so, but I now have to add petulance to that tally.

A sled dog, whether in the lead or pack, is required to do some of the work. A lazy intellectual talking dog is useless when the work of pulling a sled needs to be done. Please stop insulting hard working dogs with your comparisons. ;-)

A dog is a better “animal” than you and all the morons writing stupic comments on thes site.
All of you “people” are mad because he is a black man running the country that was built by black slaves.
Don’t ypu remember the Bushes, that created the Irak war(s), when Clinton left the presidency, US had a budget surplus, (when Clinton won the presidency, US had a monstruous deficit) it took only a very few years for George Bush to put US back in a deep deficit.
He invaded Irak because of WMD that were never found. And the list goes on and on.
Obama inherited Bushe’s mess.
switch to coffee instead of gulping down “tea party” toxic liquid “idealogy”
Yes, Sarah Palin will save us all even if she is a quitter!

I don’t know where you and others get this “Clinton left the presidency, US had a budget surplus” stuff. Simply not true. Look it up in the OMB.
What is true is that he talked about so much sheeple believed it.

Sorry to break this to you, but In Obama’s book, Dreams of My Father, he described his relationship with Reverend Wright abd he said Wright mentored him on religion and he knew he was in the right place religiously. So Obama’s wife had nothing to do with his being in Wright’s church.

This is where the story that Obama tells comes apart. Sandy says that in Obama’s book he clearly states that Rev. Wrong was his mentor. Then how is it that he did NOT know what Rev. Wrong was saying in his sermons??? Also, as to him being the first black President, the facts are that he is not a full 1/8th African to legally claim that he is black, the guidelines that are used for Native Americans. According to the records he is an Arab, by his lineage. So all of the perks he has gotten using his “Blackness” to get special programs in college etc. have been illegal and a full out lie just like everything else he says ever time he opens his mouth. Congressman Joe Wilson couldn’t have spoken truer words!!!!

HUH? I thought Hussein sat there for all those years and never heard a word that the racist Wright had said. He probably only went there occasionally to provide religious cover for future elections. After all, the koran does say it is not only permissible, but REQUIRED to deceive the enemy in order to advance islam.

#1. Dreams of my Father was ghostwritten by Bill Ayers.
#2. Obama was in the right place religiously at Wright’s church because it preaches a dialect of liberation theology with which he was comfortable, as it overlaps sufficiently with his upbringing of class envy and hatred for the West.

I definitely think that his exposure / upbringing in Indonesia (country with the largest Muslim population) impacted him; this kind of statement betrays that influence. When you’re taught at an early age that dogs are unclean, nasty, you should never own one or pet them, etc, that influences your thinking; especially when you move to a country you’re taught to hate and they treat their dogs as members of the family.

B-ma,
I’ve said since Dec 2008 when Hillary took SecState—he is in for one term. Too much money in post=Prez to hang out four more years. He will then support another first; A woman President. She has some goods on him that will eventually come out—Clintons are vindictive and she will want him to be thrown to the ash heap and have HER presidency be more historic. By March we will know.

One wonders about that in light of the rumors about Rahm and Barack gettin’ their freak on…”doggy style”…as it were, at “Man’s Country” in Chicago that the UberFrauFuhrer’s,(sorry Roger),partisans put out during the campaign.

And yes, as VDH points out and we all seem to agree, The Alleged Hawaiian isn’t a man who is used to people telling him to KMA…and making it stick.

He’s got his place in history…what does he have to gain from “Hope n’ Change v 2.0″?

It’s not only the “I’m special” mentality. It’s the arrogance of the man. He and lovely, south-of-Spain touring, wife honestly believe they’re smarter than everyone else. All the sycophonic liberals in the media, academia and Democratic Party have all told them that all their lives both in words and deeds.
What they really are is petulant, pampered children who don’t have the brain power of a good hunting dog.
This man, this Party, have once again foisted economic disaster on a nation that deserves better.
November cometh.

Do you think it would be a wise move for Obama — the figurehead /capo/ pack-leader for the hyenas in their natural habitat of dishonesty and fraud, first by calling themselves liberals, and second by calling themselves “Democrats”. Who have betrayed the natural supporters / members on the ground / the infantry of their political party.

Obvious to any sentient being they are neither liberal nor democrats, but power obsessed gang with the aim of total control. Remember the “Gang of Four”,and “Red Guard”?

The American system of governance in which all citizens have a say,whether or not they add anything positive to the nation, for who manages / administers the machinery, needs crews for the machinery, i.e. the “proletatiate”.

Were the “Democrats/liberals” — of ALL races /genders/ ethnicities — to support THEIR proletariate to leave the joy of social childhood/adolescence and becoming adult, divorcing themselves from the idea that all inadequacy is based on spurious “racism”, there would be another revolution that would make Americans proud. The “liberals” proletariate would burst the worm -like coccoon / pupa woven from the GOOD WILL SILK OF THOSE nasty whities, of government dependency and become butterflies, or maybe even Americans Eagles.

Might become, god forbid, truly American. Now why would the “democrats/liberals” want that? THEIR proletariate might become upstarts, start believing they were the equal of any man/woman and act accordingly. They might require the “elite”, their “betters”, their managers to abide by promises and oaths.AND TO TELL THEM THE TRUTH. And that would mean loss of “respect” for the capos and their “made men”, or is that “Mad Men”?

Anon, very informative and well written article at the link. Something that we realized all along, but the left simply wants to ignore. The young and fatherless blacks are potentially the useful idiots that continually vote leftists into office. So why change things?

In short, Obama is a chimera spawned by four decades of affirmative action. What you are describing is a persistent ignoring of character, competence, and accomplishment in favor of blackness. But not just any blackness, only the blackness which meets the approval of cynical Liberal gatekeepers and do-gooders who run the insane asylums; the Leftist American Academy, the Leftist Media propaganda megaphone, and the Leftist Democratic party. Obama is only the most prominent illustration of why we can’t seek accommodation with this abominable radical regime. The Leftist Academy must be dismantled. The Leftist Media megaphone must be destroyed. The Radical Democratic Party must be annihilated.

Well said Doodslag. He is a true “bargainer” as defined by Shelby Steele. Obummer makes all of the White Liberal Elite feel so much better about themselves, as they preach from their covered patios in Tiburon.

VDH:
Are you saying that our first affirmative action White House couple with a body of work equal to that of a first grader is just waking up to reality? Well if that is so maybe they will notice that they have been used by every corrupt agency of mankind to steal America blind.
So maybe the correct self characterization of Barack Obama should have been a “dog” in heat.
I don’t think there is any waking up going, not when the ‘party till you drop’ mantra still exhibits itself in the White House. Only when the money runs out will they be moving on, unless the Landlords or the Dog Catchers throw them out first.
The Clinton’s were the first official lowlifes to enter the White House (stealing the White House china etc…) in our generation but the Obama’s have taken the next progressive step downwards (have found the liquor cabinet full and must empty it before dawn) and have taken to raping and pillaging the American people and spitting on our flag as they do so with a thuggish Chicago attitude of ‘whatta you gonna do about it’ screw you we won the election as if that gave them the right to trample the Constitution.
America or at least some part of it elected these people and that say’s nothing good about that part of us. Meanwhile let’s see if there is any gold left in Fort Knox.

The right’s commentators aren’t the sort to fold their cards because the truth is on their side! They know that they have noting to fear in going after the truth. Besides, they truly love our country as it was founded (with the constitution); not the government that has turned the country into something we don’t recognize (based on what Obama / far left / progressives want to do, not the rule of law). That’s why they won’t fold.

Empty suit? He’s a ventriloquist’s dummy. As I have said before, I look at Obama, Biden, Pelosi and see Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd and a sort of malevolent Effie Clinker. The question is: who is standing in for Edgar Bergan? Who’s writing the script for Obie’s teleprompter? Who are the people behind the curtain? At least Bergen’s characters were harmlessly amusing. This crew is destuctive almost beyond measure. And I think THAT is their goal.

It’s actually far worse. Google “hedge fund managers” and “billion dollar bonus” and you get the top ten “speculators,” including Soros, who all made a billion dollars on our economy going boom!!
Guess what, they’re almost all big contributors to the Democratic Party.
“Party of the little guy” my a__!!”

This is what happens when the people find out that the suit is empty. It is curious that Obama has led such a charmed life. One would think that there was someone in the background clearing the way for him.

The Insular Politician, raised in an insular boyhood, living an insular college existence, and having an overdeveloped insular cortex…recoiling from any “invasion” into his highly fictonalized self-image.

We know he went to Columbia, but the entrance and attendance details are lost in the mist. How did he get in? On what achievement scale, compared to the norm? How did he do there? What did he do there? One does not know and the JournoLista Red Guard have ensured that nobody will ever know.

When leftists (I have come to detest the terms “liberal” and “progressive” and “mainstream” since they are self-inventions intended to mislead rather than describe)are confronted with principled dissent, even mild critique, and heaven forbid…actual disagreement, they ALL have the same reaction.

So unused to anything other than lapdog media coverage, puff pieces, treacly treatment of their every act, deed, word or thought…that it is jarring to their insularity to face anything else, no matter how mild.

Like petulant children, any adult who chastises…is a bad, “meanie”. John Kerry blurted out, after a mildly direct question during his break from the Spandex Surf tour…”Hey, you’re supposed to be on OUR side!”

The ONLY way to get the JournoLista crowd permanently on your side, is always whisper in their left ear. They are totally deaf in their right ear. You must always and forever stand to the left of them.

This President grew up on an island. Lived his boyhood very much in an island mentality. Went to Occidental and Columbia, but very much spent an island college experience, from the little we can obtain about those days. Knowing this, it’s easy to understand the gaffes about 57 states, conflated with the 57 states of the Muslim Brotherhood. Or the Cinco de Quatro celebration. Or speaking fluent Austrian.

When a Walter Mitty life of pure invention collides with harsh reality, it tends to disrupt the equilibrium. “You got me” becomes “they got me”. “Yes, we can” becomes “How can they?”. And we are the ones we have been waiting for, becomes “Is that all there is?”

The answer to the last question is, yes. Because that’s all there ever was in the first place.

“You would too if both accountability and criticism were novel experiences at 49.”

Obama’s epiphany, or rather rendezvous with reality (since he displays no evidence of enlightenment), has come a bit late in life to save him. At 49, not likely to have a significant impact on his “maturation”, let’s say. Thus the child-like regression, petulence, and channeling of Jimi Hendricks. Not sure of the connection there — skin tone, perhaps? Neither of them were/are truly “talked about like a dog”, but I’ll cut the artist and acknowledged virtuoso some slack for the hyperbole. At least he had demonstrated accomplishments.

We all know how the “Stone Free” life ended. Perhaps the unaccomplished One is committing political suicide, intentionally martyring himself for the Cause. More likely, he’s just trying to convince the brain dead Left that he already has, that the denouement to this tragedy has already happened — “politically I’m a dead dog. I did this for you”. If the O accomplishes nothing, at least he can tak credit for the ultimate personal sacrifice, then milk it for another 49 years.

BTW, I’ll take your claim of empathy for Obama’s quandary with a grain of salt. Messiahs don’t need our empathy.

I get the impression he’s glad the Dems are tanking. It takes the pressure off.

It absolves him of all responsibility to the people who hand picked him to lead their take-over (and who could take him down in a second if they needed to). “See, I’m campaigning like a champ, my opponents speak ill of me – I must be doing something right”. But you can tell that underneath the tired rhetoric, his heart is not really in it. Deep down he’s glad to have a way out. He realizes now that he bit off more than he can chew, and a GOP victory in November gives him an easy way out. A form of politcal suicide, but not quite. It may even turn out to be a good strategy since a GOP led congress gives him a bit of breathing space too, and a bit more wiggle room in some ways. This is the GOP’s last chance to get it right. A lot rides on them staying united and doing the right thing (the immediate reversal of Obama’s policies, slashing spending, cutting taxes etc.) hard and against their politcal instincts though it may be. There is no way to root out entrenched corruption without ruffling some feathers.

Jimi grew up black, very poor, was treated “like a dog” and would have never gotten to where he did without his talent. When Chas Chandler of the Animals offered him a break, he made the most of it, and achieved success way beyond anyone’s expectations. Jimi did it, and did it simply by the force of his person. His death was tragic and unnecessary, but then again, there are countless such stories away from the spotlight. He blew it and paid the price – himself.

“I’m the one that’s gonna have to die
When it’s time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to…”

The “treat me like a dog” remark was as much a dog-whistle as a whine. He was both summoning and threatening his sycophants. Step up slavey’s or look out.

And he is also justifiably angry that the pushback came so quickly. Certainly his handlers expected that they would have 4 years with a completely free hand to impose their will. Instead, he wasn’t even able to jam in the destruction of the health insurance, medical and financial sectors until the second year. He didn’t lie any less. What happened? It must be maddening.

And think of the bad luck he has had, after the campaign worked perfectly. In the campaign, the MSM covered like Deion Sanders; the unions protected like a Peyton’s line; Soros and Goldman Sachs went to the rim to destroy the economy like Kobe. But now, look at it. Why hasn’t Fox been shut down yet? Why doesn’t the MSM silence Rush? Why do the Unions let the Teabaggers proliferate?

And then there is the incredible bad break he can’t get out of mind.

How many times was he shown the graph that proved, PROVED that recessions since 1945 always, ALWAYS began powerful job growth after 13 months, or in one outlier, 18 months. And he was assured, ASSURED that the recession started in Q4 2007. There was no way, NO WAY that jobs wouldn’t come back like gangbusters no later than Q2 2009. He was going to be a hero, A HERO for all time. Romer must have shown him that graph 50 times.

Oh what an opportunity it was. His capos giggled with delight as they debated whether they could steal half a trillion, a trillion, 2 trillion? Why my goodness, they were CONSERVATIVE for Allah’s sake, settling for only 890 trillion.

Individual failure used to be buffered by … the large “we”. When our grandparents failed, they had comfortable spiritual furniture to rest in. They had, for the most part, their relationship to God, their relationship to a nation they loved, their relationship to a community and a large extended family. Faith in God, community, nation, and the large extended family have all eroded in the last forty years, and the spiritual furniture that we used to sit in has become threadbare.

But it is … the self-esteem movement that I want to emphasize. … Twenty-five years ago … the emblematic children’s book was … about doing well in the world, about persisting and therefore overcoming obstacles. Now many children’s books are about feeling good, having high self-esteem, and exuding confidence.

This is a manifestation of the self-esteem movement, a movement which started, not surprisingly, in California in the 1960s. In 1990, the California legislature sponsored a report that suggested that self-esteem be taught in every classroom as a “vaccine” against social ills, such as drug addiction, suicide, welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy, and depression (Toward a State of Esteem, 1990). the self-esteem movement is a movement with teeth; this is the movement underlying the demise of IQ testing, lest children who score low feel badly about themselves. This is the movement that has made competition a dirty word. This is a movement that has led to less plain old hard work. Shirley McLaine suggested to President Clinton that he create a cabinet-level Secretary of Self-Esteem.

… I have scoured the self-esteem literature looking for the causality as opposed to correlation, looking for any evidence that high self-esteem among youngsters causes better grades, more popularity, less teenage pregnancy, less dependence on welfare, as the California report contends. … There is nothing of this sort to be found in the literature. …

Until January 1996, I believed that self-esteem was merely a meter with little, if any, causal efficacy. The lead article in the Psychological Review convinced me that I was wrong, and that self-esteem is causal: Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (1996) reviewed the literature on genocidal killers, on hit men, on gang leaders, and on violent criminals. They argued that these perpetrators have high self-esteem, and that their unwarranted self-esteem causes violence. Baumeister’s work suggests that if you teach unwarrantedly high self-esteem to children, problems will ensue. A sub-group of these children will also have a mean streak in them. When these children confront the real world, and it tells them they are not as great as they have been taught, they will lash out with violence. So it is possible that the twin epidemics among young people in the United States today, depression and violence, both come from this misbegotten concern: valuing how our young people feel about themselves more highly than how we value how well they are doing in the world.

True; No literature that fortifies the principle of higher self esteem correlating to higher grades and accomplishment; But, now that it is in the ether, you can bet large, that the CMOA (Communist Media of America), and coincidentally, recent studies concluded by the Department of Education, will be published very soon.

Ever notice how many television ads tell the viewer he should get the car, etc., he DESERVES! (If A doesn’t deserve it by dint of working and saving to pay for it but merely by being A, maybe he should take it from B, who worked for it, but doesn’t deserve it any more than A does.)

I too have noticed the use of “deserved” by our youth. Most notably when observing the contestants who don’t make it to the “American idol” finals. “But I deserve to go” many of them claim. I then point out to my daughter how people like Sinatra , Andy Williams, Tony Bennet, Louis Armstrong, Ella, …. rode across the country year after year , night after night, slogging away in every dance hall , nightclub ,bar room, driving and sleeping in dirty busses. They worked so hard to get where they ended up.

Good selection, Goy!
Three generations of unfit teachers teaching “self-esteem”.
Three generations of institutions exploiting “affirmative action”.
Cultural and institutional descent has become inevitable.
Few objected since 1960. Few can disclaim culpability.
I certainly can and do. And perhaps, from your posts, you too Goy.

unwarranted self-esteem causes violence. Baumeister’s work suggests that if you teach unwarrantedly high self-esteem to children, problems will ensue. A sub-group of these children will also have a mean streak in them. When these children confront the real world, and it tells them they are not as great as they have been taught, they will lash out with violence

I would like to add and sorry if off topic but doing this EN MASSE describes ISLAMIC peoples to a TEE- unewarranted superiority demanders who when confronted by their inadequacy or hypocrisies or just busted LIES – can only react as programmed- by killing

During the campaign, I told my friends that if Obama was a white politician from Chicago named Barry O’Brien, he’d still be toiling away in the Illinois legislature with hopes of, maybe, some day, being elected to statewide office. Barry O’Brien would not be the darling of segments of the country on his way to the Presidency.

They dismissed me, of course, with an undercurrent that asked “Jake, dude, I think what you said was just racist.”

But what I said then and what VDH has said now are just facts.

So, here we are: an eminently under-qualified child of Leftist privilege and predilection is butchering the country at a time when we need true leadership.

Another unhappy side effect of the whole Obama fiasco is that it will likely be a very long time before another black president is elected. Even the most wonderful, qualified person of color will be negatively associated with the tragic legacy of Amerida’s first black president. Also, the “we are not racist” white folks who got their “get out of jail free” cards by voting for Obama–loved that–don’t need to do it again in their lifetime.

I think you are WRONG… a black man of principle and honor would get my vote, a man like Herman Caine, or Tim Scott, or General West comes to mind…. the problem with BHO is NOT his color it’s the content of his character that is flawed.

I think you are WRONG… a black man of principle and honor would get my vote, a man like Herman Caine, or Tim Scott, or General West comes to mind…. the problem with BHO is NOT his color it’s the content of his character that is flawed.

I agree, and I would, too. But, regrettably, the content of one’s character has been trumped by the color of one’s skin in our distorted society — witness the election of 2008. Race grievance flourishes, stoked by the so-called leadership and the institutionalized victim mentality of the black community (which continue to blame racism and long-gone slavery in America for their failures), public education at all levels, government “remedies” that have destroyed the black family, gangsta culture, and animosity toward universal values that are perceived as “white.”

Sorry, but SB is essentially correct. Unfortunately, Obama is only the “tip of the iceberg” for high-profile black politicians whose efforts at governance have been spectacular, dismal, corrupt failures. As big-city mayors and governors alike, politicians who happen to be black have a reputation for catastrophe. It would be neither fair nor accurate to say this applies accross the board for politicians who happen to be black and are elected to executive positions, but it has been dismally consistent for most of those who reach the pinnacle. Now Obama has completed the “hat trick” of sealing the perception in place of black political corruption and ineptness. Is it fair and accurate? Does that matter in a world dominated by these black politicians’ white, leftist supporters who’ve survived and thrived by creating successful false perceptions? They’re all gagging on their own bad medicine now.

The phenomenon is not “genetic” or any such nonsense, but the result of a poisonous hybrid of racial identity and left-wing politics. There is no more disaffected group of Americans, as an aggregate, as the African-American community, and it shows in the way too many at or near the top of the elected-office heap have used their positions for retribution, looting, and ruin.

How true. Rather than an exemplar of achievement, he has discredited capable, competent, qualified blacks for a long time to come. Which, of course, affirmative action has always done. Strange that that self-evident truth is lost on so many.

It’s odd but it used to be that if you were a minority you had to be twice as good to get somewhere. But now it seems if you’re a minority you have to be twice as bad to get somewhere. Or that’s how it’s coming across. It’s too bad for all of the minorities out there who kick ass. A lot of folks are not going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Excellent analysis as always Dr. Hanson.
This is a stretch I know but I say Obama doesn’t make it to the end of his first term. Not for any dark reasons….merely because this job is hard and I see him as one who has always taken the easy way out without ever having had to earn anything or show any results. I’ve seen the type before. People like him just quit when the going gets tough.
I hope.

If both houses of Congress flip in November, he’ll quit. He won’t resign though. No need to. He’ll take more vacations, go golfing more, maybe spend more time with the kids, all attributable to the stress of working with recalcitrant Repubs. Look at his wife. She retired on active duty day one on the job as First Lady.

He will be busy, though. What with Billy Ayers coming in the back door to work with him on his memoirs, the Saudis stopping by with plans for his combination Presidential Library and Muslim Cultural Center. Michelle and he might redecorate the entire White House with a Purple Haze theme. There’ll be parties galore, and plenty of whining and dining to do. Politics-wise, he’ll lay low for a while in order to save up enough political capital to purchase that spot on Mount Rushmore. So, for our perennial slacker of a Commander in Chief, not a bad way to spend his last two years before we boot him out.

We know that Sarah quit, but I would bet a few thousand dollars that Barack won’t quit. I have been wrong before, but less than some others by avoiding such absurd predictions. I have made some money by challenging blowhards to put their money where their mouth is.

Let’s put it this way: Barry (and his wife) ain’t working too hard as it is now (considering the wars, the economy, the sub rosa revolutionary dealings with Soros, etc.) when the deck is stacked in his favor. What’s he going to do when he doesn’t have Congress holding his hand?

Obama has been doing such a good job, why should he quit? After this presidency I’m sure he’s got his sights on being Secretary General of the UN, and head of a one world government. Can’t keep a good man down.

Obama will resign. He has never stayed in any one job very long if it was a full-time job. His longest employment was as a state senator – and that is a part time job. He gets bored or he gets out ahead of being held responsible for his own results. He’s the Office-Temp president who decides on matters of national policy using such simplistic concepts that they are little more than factoids.

If the Republicans gain control of the House and Senate, his legislative ambitions are gone. All her has left is the veto and that will on last until the Republicans send him legislation that is so popular that his veto will be over-ridden. If some of the world’s bad guys start trouble and his own party starts supporting Hilary, he’ll resign. He’ll leave Joe in charge figuring that Joe will make such a mess of things that he will look good by comparison.

Unless the Republicans try to impeach him, in which case he will stay and pray that his approval ratings will go up as Clinton’s did.

He has too much ego to quit, unless, and this is the big one, it becomes crystal clear that he is going to be removed, and even then, it’s doubtful. I think he will have to be hauled, kicking and screaming in handcuffs out of the White House, and don’t you just love that imagery? Biden is as dirty as Stinky – the chapter on Biden was the point at which I put down “Culture of Corruption”, because his shenanigans and convoluted trail of slime and attempts to conceal it were far too complicated for me to follow without a map. So I’m all for kicking out both of them, along with Holder, and letting the new Speaker take over. That would be a novel and refreshing Constitutional event, and one – possibly the only one – that would save America.

Quite an interesting suggestion. I think perhaps you are right. After a gamechanging historic loss of both houses by the largest margins ever, I could see Barry and Wife backing out of the limelight… emerging on occasion to blame Bush for the defeat, claiming the TEA party was the “association of NO”, and that Republicans will not be bi-partisan…

Here is another prediction, by the end of 2012 or soon thereafter, we will see Oblamea associated with scandals, cheating, bribery, political bullying, doubledealing, friend enriching, general partying and goofing off at taxpayer expense… to the level that he and his family will eventually leave this country… in shame… and be seen as a total paper thin veneer of a president.

Like most, I was unfamiliar with the term “talk about me like a dog.” Some have pointed out it was used in a Jimi Hendrix song. Some have pointed to a Langston Huges story. A Google Books search for “talk about me like a dog” and “talked about me like a dog” yields nearly 50 hits from books and magazines, most from black sources. I hadn’t realized that blacks used the phrase.

This is not the first time that President Obama has made references to black culture. “We are the ones we have been waiting for” was the title of a book by Alice Walker and a line from a poem by June Jordan.

I know that the “treat me like a dog” line was not in the text of the speech but an ad lib. But, had it been in the text, I believed it would have been spelled “dawg” as in the parlance of his Southside Chicago “homies”.

most of us treat our dogs (and cats) pretty damn well in USA– well fed, medical care, exercise, treats LOVE, even baby talk–

when I first heard Obama compare his treatment by people to a DOG I was kinda thinking ooooh Muslims- they think dogs are unclean and for most part treat them as OBJECTS of disdain, distaste & unclean————–sometimes throw a rock at one to get rid of it———-

The real horror is that Barack Obama is a perfect representative of America’s Elite. Reid, Pelosi, Boxer, (and Noonan and David Brooks) and his core supporters really believe that a good looking African American (with lovely East African Caucasian features, by the way), with the pretend affirmative action credentials they have delighted in for some 40 years is exactly how one should REALLY run the country. This is exactly why the Tea Party Movement is so very important, if the USA is to have a future at all.

VDH: you have a gift to be able to tell the story so succinctly. Your conclusion is harsh but true. Fortunately, the country has been able to overcome incompetent and socialist presidents in the past. However, how long will it be before a foriegn enemy, of which there are many, percieves Obama as too weak and tries to take advantage us?

Is there such a thing as an “Italian-American”?…. How many hundreds of years does one have to trace back their heritage to be known as just, “An American”.

If this bizarre hyphenated heritage label were ever applied to the Irish, it would be more appropriate just to use the moniker “Heinz 57″ – the tiny little island has had its share of inhabitants and conquerors over the centuries between the Celts, Vikings, Normans, British, Spanish and god knows who else.

The Spanish were better said to be adopted too. When their ships were wrecked off the Galway coast on the west side, the survivors who made it ashore ended up staying. They’d meet up with one of the local lassies and end up staying. Hence the “Black Irish” who were dark haired and blue eyed west coasters of Ireland.

Dr Hanson,
Your enumeration of BHO’s background informed me of certain things about which I knew nothing. I already had a poor opinion of the current president’s style, direction and record of achievement in his administration. But now that I know his background, I do not find the man worthy of pity. I actually find him frightening.
In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, Marc Antony’s funeral oration contains a line:
“The evil that men do lives long after them; the good is oft interred with their bones…”
With that in mind, I cannot fail but to conclude that the damage BHO – and especially those interested parties and backers who have worked thru him – have caused, are causing and will cause terrible damage to the nation for decades to come. A man like him – with the worldview and faults that he has – and the kinds of powerful sponsors he has, with their particular agendas……….how could such a thing come to pass?
I suspect November 4, 2012 will see a voter decision to NOT continue the current ‘transformative change’ agenda, and January 20, 2013 will be a day of spontaneous nationwide celebration.

VDH does an excellent job of describing Obama’s incredibly thin political resume. Most folks outside of Illinois are unfamiliar with his in-state electoral “good fortune” (Chicago style). There’s a hell of a lot we don’t know know about our president…like everything from his birth certificate, college transcripts, passport records or even how his education at Columbia and Harvard was financed or by whom.

You can follow the time-line of everything we are supposed to know about him and be left with a lot of little, mundane questions. Has Obama ever ridden a horse? Has he ever fired a gun? Has he ever had sweat run in his eyes from anything other than play? Has he ever performed any physical labor? I’m guessing the answer to all of these questions is either “no” or “none of your business”.

Even more dangerous is a cornered sociopath (he who lacks conscience – even with a smile on his face and his nose held high in the air.). He will find a way to hurt you either directly or indirectly if confronted or offended.

Neither the sociopath or narcissistic personality are receptive to or “cured” by psychotherapy or personal reflection. Obama has significant traits of both and reinforced by the liberal media dog groomers. He must be contained at least. He is incapable of gracefully accepting any criticism or responsibility for his own behavior other than through getting even. He will be most happy to serve out his full term if for nothing else but revenge. Perhaps after the November election the Republicans can serve as the mechanisn of containment. They are not likely capable of more. Go Vote – contain the yapping little spiteful dog.

I’m shocked, simply shocked that so many people have now concluded that Obama is not the Messiah, because to the best of my knowledge, he never claimed to be.

What he did do while campaigning for the presidency was promise that he would re-distribute the wealth of the nation, raise a 250,000 person strong civilian army and bankrupt the middle class in America with Universal Health care, a system of global taxation through the corrupt dictators who control the United Nations, and by denying this nations people the benefits of our huge domestic energy supplies including oil, natural gas and potentially, atomic energy.

Obama was not elected, he was selected. By whom? Go figure. One thing is for sure, he is dedicated to fulfilling his campaign promises and has in less than two years come a long way.

This one’s over. The question now is who if anyone can replace the ONE and will put the pieces of the republic back together again after 2012. Rolling back the wreckage of four years of communist “rule” will be no small task, requiring a leader, not simply another politician.

The entire story of Obama is from the book of Karl Marx. A book that President Obama may have read, and studied, one of the very few.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” I believe he got it.

Actually, he did campaign as a messiah/demigod. His official photographs always featured–many still feature–something round and shiny (a halo) behind his head, or images of him seemingly levitating above his followers. He posed in front of a Superman statue in exactly the same stance, sending a subliminal message that HE was Superman (he later joked about people thinking he was Superman, and the stupid reporters laughing at his supposed witticism didn’t realize that he had the set the whole thing up). He talked about the reversal of alleged man made global warming and sea level rise with his nomination/election.

If you go to the White House Web site, which has been transformed from a normal government site into a gushing Obama fan site and propaganda vehicle, you can see dozens of carefully selected photographs portraying him as heroic, semi-divine, bigger than life.

His creators spent a billion dollars we know of getting him elected. Who knows how many billions more–and promises of future billions–were involved? PR agencies were used to concoct an image that millions fell for. Everything from start-to-finish was faked, fabricated, tweaked, and sprayed with glue and glitter. He was and is a cruel being portrayed as benign, a poorly-educated being portrayed as all-knowing, and a fool portrayed as wise.

He is Lady Gaga, but without her talent, looks, originality, style, humor, or intelligence. From his ghostwritten and myth-infused autobiographies, to his faux town hall meetings stuffed with bussed-in union workers and trolls on his slush-fund payroll, everything about him is performance art.

Yes, he was selected, groomed, and programmed by someone with lots of money and influence, but the fact that he and his wife went along with the flim-flam, and continue to do so, says more about them than the scam itself. The fact that millions of voters were sucked in by this Elmer Gantry televangelist shows that at the end of the day, conformity and vanity count more than almost anything else.

Thanks for a particularly insightful article. Most impressive. May I add just a few additional ideas?

Those of us who work for a living, who have actually spent a lifetime in the world where, each and every day, reliability, accomplishment, dedication, industry, practicality and honor matter know that one of the primary indicators of character–or lack thereof–is whether a man is humble or self aggrandizing. Will he allow his work to speak for itself, or must he heap undeserved honors on himself, or allow others to do it for him, refusing to correct their misconceptions?

Two examples: Mr. Obama has, as far as I can remember, allowed others to call him a “constitutional law professor.” I know that he has often said that he has taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, but I am not certain that he has claimed professorship, so I’ll not attribute that to him. The problem is that he was never a professor, the highest academic, teaching rank in any university. He was merely an adjunct lecturer, and by all accounts, a lecturer for a position invented just for him to advance his political fortunes. He had no qualifications for such a post that outstripped those of any other law school graduate. In academia, if one is not a professor, one does not claim to be a professor, nor does one allow others to create or hold that misconception. It is not only bad manners, it is revealing of a serious character flaw. The second, previously mentioned here, is the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee admitted that Mr. Obama had done nothing to deserve it. Mr. Obama admitted that he had done nothing to deserve it, yet he accepted it anyway, debasing himself, and the Prize for a very long time. Perhaps the best commentary I saw on this topic was posted on a restaurant’s sign: “Free Nobel Peace Prize with Shrimp Taco.”

Who then is Mr. Obama and why is he befuddled? i’ve said it before: He’s a con man, a con man who forgot the prime directive of con men–make the con and run before the marks know what hit them. Never hang around too long. The worst sort of hubris to which the con man is subject is falling for his own cons, believing that he is invulnerable, that he is actually what he fools others into believing he is. After so many years of living with ever changing lies, of manipulative, shallow relationships, of always coming out on top without any real, honest labor involved, of believing the world to be populated with two types of people: Marks and you, it’s easy to believe your own hype. When one has the entire national media calling you a God, when women–in the media and out–talk of their sexual fantasies revolving around your glory, when you lecture in front of faux Greek columns behind your faux pre-presidential seal, emanating from the extra-constitutional, non-existant Office of The President-Elect, and every vapid, cliched, meaningless syllable you utter is met with rapturous applause and adulation and is said to surpass the Gettysburg Address, is it any wonder the demi-god con man might begin to lose himself utterly.

And so Mr. Obama is in unfamiliar territory and ill equipped, mentally, physically, and rationally to deal with any of it. The marks have caught on, and more are catching on every day, and he’s still not running. But more and more of his wanna be con men in the House, Senate and elsewhere are catching the scent of decay and are running–away from him. He will not handle it well. He will not moderate. He may very well melt down in any number of ways. And he will bring additional, new dishonor to America and to the Office of the President. And if we’re very, very lucky, that’s the worst he’ll cause to happen.

Well said. You are right, there does seem to be a trend forming: Orzag, Rohmer, now Rahm making for the exit. Bambi will be left holding the bag…. forever. But your final point is excellent too. As much as “we the people” are glad that his agenda is not being well received, he is our leader and like it or not, we have to depend on him to protect us for the next two years. Therefore, we should not hope for too complete a meltdown. At some level (hopefully a very lame duck level) we still need the man to function. The wolves–Putin, Ahmedinajad, Chavez–are licking their lips. Scary.

Exactly, love the con men analogy like the cons in the film rounders, if they stuck around conning the same card players they would get caught lickety split, its why they have to keep moving from town to town. Obama can’t do that he’s stuck in Washington.
Always scroll down to look if you have added to VDH’s column. You have fans in Toronto. I bet VDH reads your comments as well. This has to be one of my favorite VDH column. This and the one about the farmer that tries to steal his water, reminded me of that great film Jean de Florette and Manon of the spring.
Man’s nature never changes. Think Thomas Sowel conflict of Visions.

Yes, there was a lot of smoke and mirrors. But we see through that now. And a Tsunami is coming in November to wash it all away.

Dems (those who still can’t see the writing on the wall) are banking on voters’ short-term memories. Unfortunately (for them) they have done everything they possibly could to shock voters into attentive wakefulness. Little is slipping by us now. We have developed long and accurate memories.

Now (thanks to the efforts of many like the good doctor) the facts sit plainly before us. For instance we remember that it was the Dems (as Thomas Sowell explained so well at NRO yesterday) who (deliberately?) spearheaded the policies that triggered the financial meltdown through easing mortgage loan standards and passing the bad debt on to the public. Or that Obama’s solution to economic crisis was to pile on trillions more in debt. They know a con-man when they see one, and the more Dems petulantly point the finger at Republicans, (or Obama bows to dictators, defends radical mosque builders etc.) the more they reveal themselves unfit to govern.

One thing that is funny is that Dems keep trying to scare voters by claiming there will be a witch hunt if the GOP regains Congress. My answer to that is “Damn Right!” We can never go back to business as usual now. We need to blast all the progressive, corrupt, socialist Dems out of office FOR GOOD! I’m told there are plenty of decent, moderate patriotic Dems. I’m prepared to accept that (I hope its true!), and glad to with work them to restore a strong America. We need two principled parties to steer this great ship of ours and hopefully keep the other honest. But the corruptocrats now running the show need to be exposed along with the bag-men, media elite and corporate financiers who pull the strings. We’ve got your numbers now.

It’s time to nail these jokers good and hard. Do what I’m doing, plan a party for November 2nd. I’ll be taking off work early and have already scheduled to pick up 11 relatives and friends to drive to the polling stations. There will be a lot more by November 2. I’m not letting ANYONE sit this one out. I’m still working on the fence sitters I know, trying to convince them that Obama’s policies will break America for good. This is the home-stretch (time to pour it on) and it’s starting to sink in. Afterward, burgers and beer at my place as we watch the returns… It’s not over yet, but the Dems sure aren’t doing themselves any favors… And of course, the real work begins after November, not only exposing the progressive’s destructive agenda, but going after the Bid Dog himself in 2012. If America goes down, it won’t be because I didn’t do my share.

That’s wishful thinking bullcrap. The typical American voter has little memory of politics and current events, no knowledge of history or economics, and no understanding of how government works. The typical American voter chooses a candidate based on three criteria: the current state of the voter’s wallet, the physical appeal of the candidate, and the promises of the candidate to bring government-derived goodies to the voter. Few politicians are elected because they are wise, ethical, fair-minded, sensible, and logical. They are elected because they aren’t a despised incumbent, they look and sound great, and they promise the moon and the stars.

In this year’s elections, Democratic candidates, heavily aided by mainstream media, will blame the Bush presidency for the recession, give credit to the current Democrat-majority Congress for any recent economic improvements, brag about how many mortgage foreclosures they prevented, and continue to lie about unemployment (which is 16%, not 10%, when you count people who have given up looking for work). The media will ensure that Democratic candidates always look their best while showing the most unflattering photos and videos of their opponents. The Democratic candidates will make scores of promises about how the government will add jobs and send pork projects to voters’ neighborhoods, and journalists will not challenge these projects or ask the Democratic candidates about the taxes needed to fund them.

Thus, I predict that both Congressional houses will retain Democratic majorities in 2011.

This shouold be required reading; a copy sent to all registered voters, extra copies to every print and media journalist, and triplicate copies to members of the liberal/educational complex. It might well be the definitive Obama bio. Never in the course of human events have so many been so incredibly duped by so little. (aaaargh, I forgot, Winston has been booted from the WH).

This is the best I’ve read yet about the dog days of August/September that are dogging Barry. And I couldn’t agree more, that for once in his sheltered, pampered affirmative action dominated life he is going to be held accountable for his action, or in Barry’s case, lack of action. His tired old “Bush did it” litany isn’t rousing the masses any longer and perhaps are doing just the opposite; that is reminding the voters that while President Bush was far from perfect in many areas he was not busy destroying the economy and apologizing for America at every opportunity. I think that once the November elections are over and the results are what many predict they will be, that is a change in the power of the Congress we will begin to see more and more of Barry’s advisers such as they are begin to bow wow out of his administration. Poor Barry.

“The wonder is not that Obama is angry at criticism, but why he is so surprised in a weird “how dare they?” fashion.”

Obama reminds me of the far-left trolls who come into web sites and chat rooms. They insult people, they say the most hateful things, and they are shocked, shocked mind you, when people stand up for themselves and answer back.

And you’ve GOT to be kidding about the “experience” issue. EXPERIENCE??? Clear-minded Americans have been saying even before the election that this guy never had ANY executive experience. He never ran a town, a city, a state, or even a major corporation. The only thing he had experience in was running for office, and not even much of that when you come right down to it.

Think about it. If a Republican ran for office with Obama’s resume, they would be laughed at for days and days. Even poor Sarah Palin, a woman with far more executive experience than Obama ever had, was actually ridiculed for not having enough experience to be VICE president, let alone president. There is a special place in hell for the toadies in the mainstream media who criticized Palin in this manner just to suck up to a flyweight like Obama.

Nope, this is the first president in history who was bought and paid for by the mainstream media. He was marketed like a set of cheap tires and America was dumb enough to buy it (except for the roughly 48% of us who voted against this madness). And now what do we have? A president who is even making the Jimmy Carter administration look good, which I never thought could ever be possible.

So now who do we go to complain to? Who do we say “I told you so” to? What can we do to show the mainstream media that what they did during the 2008 election was not only shameful, but also destroyed what little trust we had left in the mainstream media?

Simple. We vote. In November, we show the mainstream media and all of Obama’s toadies how wrong they were. We vote anybody who supported this man’s agenda out of office. We create such a stink during the election and make so much noise about stopping Obama and his reign of incompetence that it will send a signal for generations to come. If any, any, future politician dare come along and try to ignore the will of the people on such a hideous scale as this guy did, then he or she can expect some major consequences. If we stick together on this, we will show the people who put this child into office how seriously wrong they were.

Can we, as a nation, overcome the many mistakes that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have made? Of course we can. After all, we’re Americans and we’re used to adversity trying to rain on our parade. We will come back stronger because Americans now understand, really understand, how important elections are and how dangerous it is to send someone into the White House with absolutely no experience for the job. We can also thank Obama for the creation of the Tea Parties, perhaps one of the greatest grass-roots movements ever created in this country.

So there is hope, America, and in November we will show the mainstream media, the political elites, the far left, and the rest of the liars about “Hope and Change” what happens when you mess with the American public.

Always a treat to read the ideas of Mr. Hanson. You are absolutely right. Poor baby. Stroked, petted, cosseted, wrapped in cotton wool, and handed pretty much everything his cold little heart desired. And now… a snarling mass of millions of Americans and a thundercloud of ridicule. Tough. He probably had a vision of his presidency and it was replete with adoring crowds of peasants with Obama the central figure liking Moses leading us all to the promised land. He probably needs to be on a strong mood stabilizer with plenty of rest.

“Don’t be too sorry for him. Once out of the White House he will make so many speeches at $250K a pop that he won’t even mind paying back half of it in taxes. And as the first “black” president he is sure to get that statue on the Mall in DC…

“…Obama is not the Messiah, because to the best of my knowledge, he never claimed to be.”

As a candidate Obama never claimed to be anything (specific), just Hope & Change & Unity & blah blah blah. However, there was a concerted effort to deify the bum. His handlers, the media and the crowds made him into a messiah figure sent to deliver the Promised Land….to the radical Left, it turns out. Unlike you, not enough people saw through the charade.

Please, folks! Stop associating the “o” with Jimi Hendrix. . . Jimi at least served in the military and was in fact a paratrooper until he broke his ankle in an accident and had to quit the jumpers. He also was for the war in Vietnam at least early on.Jimi never hated America and never used race as an issue. And he was a dadburn good guitarist as well.I doubt the “o” can even play the kazoo.

Maybe Nigel was a narcissist too, using his seductive charm to impress Jeannine with his amp – or was it David St. Hubbins…

I wonder if the O-dog’s writers ever worked on the Spinal Tap rockumentaries?… have a look below:

“SPINAL TAP’s 1982 tour in support of the album ‘Smell The Glove’ was captured on film by director Marty Di Bergi resulting in the documentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” which the band immediately labeled a “hatchet job” and “character assassination.”

In 1992, when SPINAL TAP seemed almost forgotten, they re-formed and returned to the spotlight along with a new album Break Like The Wind. In 2007, the band reunited to play the Live Earth Concert at Wembley Stadium in London to show their support for Global Warming.

On June 30, 2009, SPINAL TAP will reunite once again for their ‘One Night Only World Tour’ at London’s Wembley Arena.”

We knew he started out as a community activist, like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, and that he spent 20 years attending the Wright’s church. What else did we really need to know about the sort of person he was? And yet because he acted laid back, spoke grammatically, and seemed to be the very opposite of angry and bothered, we thought he was different. So now everybody who voted for him, instead of giving the rest of us teaching moments, are themselves getting four teaching years. Too bad the rest of us also already knew our lessons and should be able to skip the course.

“because he acted laid back, spoke grammatically, and seemed to be the very opposite of angry and bothered, we thought he was different”

Yep. That is precisely why he was elected. He told us in his “biographies” how he learned to do it in his teens. He had 98% of the black vote locked anyway, and 95% of the raving leftists, but he needed a large chunk of the non-idealogues in the middle class to win. He conned them by acting calm.

He was formally trained for 20 years in the art of hiding who he really is. Everything from the voice to the hand mannerisms to the clothes to the family to the portfolio of lieing techniques was planned and practiced for decades.

Planned by the leftists who created him, practiced by him….that was his job. There are hundreds of examples of it, but think about this one: for what reason would an obscure state senator who had never dealt with national issues suddenly appear on the national scene with a thorough familiarity with the affairs of foreign countries, and be conversant with all national issues, including a pat, canned response to virtually any question? (and yes, I know that his major at Columbia was political science with an emphasis on international relations….but that was 21 years prior to his appearance on the national stage with no intervening exposure to international affairs.) Palin was a governor and didn’t know those details. Neither did Dubya in 2000. No person except someone who had been in national government roles for years would have any cause to know the details that Obama knew in 2006, no matter have slick, self-serving answers to every question. This guy was trained for decades.

Been there – done that in Quebec where anglophones voted overwhelmingly for the separatist anti-English parti quebecois so they could feel good about themselves for being so broad-minded by voting for the enemy of all they represented. In very short shrift they had their noses rubbed in the truth when legislation banning the use of English in public places with the exception of federal property and further punitive legislation deeming that all businesses with more than fifteen employees must operate in French was enacted. The result – a mass exodus of anglo-Quebeckers to other provinces with the result that the population of Quebec remains stagnant while Ontario’s has almost doubled. Oh what a tangled web is woven when hate and resentment enter politics!

Obama, as has been pointed out, is both a pathological narcissist and a sociopath – psychological states that I believe he moved into as a young boy – and which essentially removed him from any ability to interact with reality.

He lives in a virtual world of his own words and images, where he controls all interactions – and importantly, reactions. So far in his life, he’s managed to retain control. Until now.

His three tactics of interaction with others: misinformation, emotional manipulation and accusations of bias if you dare to disagree – have worked very well all his life. Until now.

Now, Obama has moved into a situation where he can’t control others directly. That’s because these controlling tactics work primarily via direct contact. When the interaction is indirect – via TV, the internet – people have the time to react rationally rather than emotionally. They can actually think about what Obama says for a few minutes – and see that his words are ambiguous, his facts are missing, his agenda is control.

So, for the first time, Obama is subject to reasoned reaction. He’s even asked to defend his agenda.
Since his actions have never been, themselves, specific, grounded, factual, and have been instead, tactics of emotional manipulation – reasoning about them and discovering these flaws is untenable. Obama cannot defend these empty speeches – and is furious that he is being put in such a position.

Therefore he lashes out at any and all criticism, any and all requests for facts and analysis. His first reaction to the refusal of others to be manipulated into submission – is anger.
He’ll attack anyone who criticizes. He’ll use accusations of bias -partisan and racial – on any and all who dissent from him.
Another reaction will be to act ‘as if’ the critics and criticism don’t exist. They are beneath him.
And another is diversion – Obama is letting Congress take the blame for his unpopular policies. He’s ‘above Congress’. Then he’ll set himself up as a victim of a GOP Congress.

Will he run in 2012? I don’t think so. The work of being a leader bores him. He doesn’t want to, and frankly, doesn’t have the capacity to think through theories and policies. He’s only ‘alive’ when he’s in front of an adulating crowd, swooning over his words. He loves the perks and parties of the office but not the requirements. And the Democratic Party are seeing him now as a problem; they might, themselves, be trying to find him a World Leader Pompous Position. At the UN, where he can pontificate and live in his own fictional world day and night.

The problem remains, however, with the people who run Obama. The radical socialists who want a statist infrastructure set up. Will they give up?

A firewall has to be built to contain them. If there is one thing Obama’s Cabal has taught us, it is that the existing Constitution protections can be circumvented, at least in the short run, by dedicated subversives. (Imagine what would happen if they acquire another SCOTUS seat.)

We need several Constitutional amendments that give the people the ability to react to con artists like Obama much faster than is possible now. Term limits would be good, but they are too slow. The people need a mechanism to recall criminal politicians without depending on elected representatives. It can’t be a trivial thing to do, but without the ability to evict criminals from office as soon as they begin to rule against the public will, we will always be subject to a new set of charlatans who do damage in a few months that takes decades to correct.

We also need to stongly reinforce the powers of the branches. Presidential powers need to be dramatically reduced and the Commerce clause needs to be amended to eliminate the possibility of distorting its original meaning.

Agreed. I’m thinking it has to be a new office that is not associated in any way with the executive, judiciary or legislative.

Strictly delineated powers, yet plenipotentiary investigative powers within those limits. All government officials must open their books and answer questions when given notice.

No power to prosecute or sentence, only to expose directly to the public and make recommendations.

Possibly give the public direct power to decide via a mechanism like the Athenian ostracism process (?)

Extremely short terms (1 year), but with the authority to continue working on open files after term is up.

Purpose: to track clearly pre-defined anti-constitutional movements, organizations, ideologies etc. getting too close to policy making circles and b) to track and expose the influence of big money within policy making circles. Again, the idea is only to report in detail to the public along with recommendations, then let the public decide what to do (within pre-defined limits as well.)

It’s a pretty radical idea, but the fact is that as it exists the Constitution does not really provide strong safeguards against subversive forces within the US who manage to get hold (legally though deceitfully) of the Executive and Legislative branches, and also the ‘commanding heights’ of our cultural engine: academia and the media.

A 4th branch to audit and advise sounds complicated and not very threatening or responsive enough.

I believe the people require the ability to quickly recall federally elected officials. Today, if there is a method, it’s certainly obscure.

In the case of the President, I believe the existing impeachment process must be initiated by Congress. So of course, with the most dangerous man in history sitting the White House, there was no way in the first 2 years to remove him because his own party controlled congress.

My idea is to allow 1/3 of the voters in the prior election to instigate a recall election via signed petitions, which would force a recall election within 2 months, for any federal office including President. The % and time may not be the right ones, but those numbers make it very hard to accomplish, but not impossible. Imagine if congress criminals had been threatened with recall petitions mounting over 25% in the summer of 2009. Everything would be different today.

I would rather deal with the potential risk of frivolous manipulation of such a system than the KNOWN DISASTER of elected officials being immune from public recall for 2 years.

In addition, such a system would make a citizen’s vote even more valuable. Only citizens voting in the prior election would have the right to petition for recall of the criminals who lied to get themselves elected.

But what about long term efforts to subvert the Constitution? They can be hard to discern against the chaotic backdrop of public life. Strategies like Piven Cloward for instance, or the groups that develop, enlist and deploy such techniques. It might be helpful if someone with a powerful microphone had said (back in the 60′s), “Hey, these people have developed and deployed a method to deliberately crash state budgets as well as the social fabric in order to bring about the conditions for a Communist revolution. Here’s the evidence, what do you think?”

The Socialists are pretty good at hiding in plain sight while controlling the discourse. Their Soviet mentors having developed the methods of “Provokation” going back to the days of Lenin. They will adjust again, learning to bore deeper still, and conceal their agenda more carefully. It would be good to have some kind of an early warning mechanism too.

I think it is understandable to want to change the constitution in response to having elected a bad apple… however, the constitution is not in the wrong here. The will of the people determined this course. The will of the people is the problem here, not the constitution. And we the people are who the constitution protects. Do not change the constitution to protect us from ourselves and our bad decisions. Let the next decade of clean up serve as a warning for the future generations that no one should vote with their emotions, but that voting is a decision best made with factial contemplation and sobriety.

But it should be clear to everyone that the criminals have found ways to undermine it. You could make a good case that sabotaging the Constitution has been their primary focus for decades. We could all cite dozens of examples.

Point 2: we are in the midst of the greatest threat to our country since it was founded. I’m including the Civil War, WWII, and the Cold War. And the threat is within our own borders. No external country can defeat us.

It isn’t even certain that we will be able to prevail, but if we do, the first order of business should be build firewalls suitable for the 21st century. It’s no different than upgrading the military as technology evolves.

Fortunately, the Founders provided the means to do so. We should leverage their wisdom. The tool is the amendment process.

So what is the cusp of the greatest threat? imho, it’s the elected officials, the ruling class. Even setting ideology aside, they have raped us. Include ideology, and it’s treason. In 18 months they have wrought damage that will take decades to repair, if it can be repaired at all.

There may be other ways to fix that problem, but simply assuming we have learned our lesson should not be the only corrective action.

Electing a bad President is one thing. Getting caught up in messianic fervor is another. Dealing with the aftermath of ideologically driven incompetence is another still…

But I’m talking about a long term, systematic, well funded, well planned… indeed the only term I can really think of that truly applies is ‘diabolical’ project to destroy American culture and subvert its national institutions. That such an audacious and cynical large-scale project could reach such an advanced stage is to me a serious warning sign. How did it happen? Could it happen again?

I have a lot of faith in an informed, alert public too. But we went to sleep. Could it happen again?

Not saying my idea is the only way. But how can we watch our elected officials and the bureaucracy more closely and systematically? How can we alert the citizenry quickly when collectivist (or capitalist) cabals start concentrating power? What are the warning signs? What do we watch for?

Electing a bad President is one thing. Getting caught up in messianic fervor is another. Dealing with the aftermath of ideologically driven incompetence is another still…

But I’m talking about a long term, systematic, well funded, well planned… indeed the only term I can really think of that truly applies is ‘diabolical’ project to destroy American culture and subvert its national institutions. That such an audacious and cynical large-scale project could reach such an advanced stage is to me a serious warning sign. How did it happen? Could it happen again?

I have a lot of faith in an informed, alert public too. But we went to sleep. Could it happen again?

Not saying my idea is the only way. But how can we watch our elected officials and the bureaucracy more closely and systematically? How can we alert the citizenry quickly when collectivist (or capitalist) cabals start concentrating power? What are the warning signs? What do we watch for?

1. The President may veto line items of legislation passed by Congress and presented to him for his signature. Vetoed line items shall be returned to Congress for reconsideration in the same manner as provided herein regarding wholly rejected legislation.

2. The Executive branch of the government shall enforce all laws enacted by Congress, and all provisions thereof, unless they shall be repealed by subsequent Act of Congress or nullified as contrary to the provisions of this Constitution by the Supreme Court or the States.

3. Signing Statements issued by the President upon approving legislation passed by Congress shall not nullify any portion of the relevant legislation, except in conjunction with the veto power granted herein.

4. No President may exercise the privilege of recess appointments for more than five positions during his tenure, nor shall the privilege of recess appointment be used for any member of the judicial branch, nor shall a recess appointment be used for any appointee already submitted to Congress or for any position which was already vacant on or before the day of their recess. Congress shall, within ninety days of their return from recess, either confirm or disqualify any recess appointee in the same manner as if the appointment had been made while they were not in Recess. If confirmed, the appointee shall continue to serve as described for recess appointments in the Constitution.

5. Executive Orders by the President are limited to implementation or clarification of existing legislation as enacted by Congress and must cite the portion of the relevant law which they seek to implement or clarify.

6. Within six months following the ratification of this amendment by the several States, all Executive Orders issued by any President, either current or preceding, and still in effect as of the date of ratification, shall be reviewed and revised according to paragraph five of this Amendment, and if they be not in compliance thereof, shall be rendered null and void.

7. No President may suspend habeas corpus, nor assume Emergency Powers, without the express consent of a majority of all members in both houses of Congress, nor shall any such consent exceed thirty days without subsequent consent of two-thirds of the entire membership of the House and two-thirds of the entire membership of the Senate, nor can the duration of any subsequent consent exceed a period of thirty days.

8. No President may disclose information affecting national security to any foreign nation or power, nor alter the classification of documents affecting national security, without the express consent of Congress.

9. No President may implement, by any action or order, any terms of a treaty or international agreement with any foreign nation or power which has not been ratified by Congress as provided in this Constitution.

10. No person appointed to fill a close advisory or other position with direct access to the President, and no person whose office permits the determination of access to the President, and no heads of departments, subordinate heads, or any other person whose functions include determination of policy, shall be exempted from confirmation by Advice and Consent of Congress, nor may Congress by legislation circumvent this provision.

11. All actions, papers, and communications of the President, and of his Office, and of the Executive Branch, are subject to review by Congress, but in instances wherein the underlying issue of such actions, papers and communications shall be determined by the Supreme Court to be vital to matters of national security, no details thereof may be disclosed by anyone holding an office under the United States to anyone outside of Congress, until such time as the national security impediment shall have been removed by Congress; but this impediment shall not be operative as a means of failure or refusal to disclose information in questions of misconduct or criminal activity.

12. The President may not appoint to any office anyone who has previously served as private legal counsel or private legal advisor to that President, nor may officers of the United States serve as counsel to the President in personal legal matters which may have occurred either before or while in office, nor may the President or anyone holding an office of public trust in or under the United States use public funds for private legal defense.

13. The immediate family of a President, including but not limited to his spouse or domestic partner, children and their spouses or domestic partners, and siblings and their spouses or domestic partners, shall not be eligible to seek the office of President, nor to hold any elected or appointed office under the United States, for ten years after that President shall have left office, nor shall the immediate family head any agency, hold any position, or perform any duty, whether compensated or not, which is empowered to make law or policy, during the tenure of that President.

14. Impeachable offenses of the President and all lesser appointed or elected officials shall include malfeasance and misfeasance, and shall include willful refusal to enforce laws affecting national security or to protect the covenant with the several states.

15. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions or the legislatures in the several States, as provided herein.”

1. The President may veto line items of legislation passed by Congress and presented to him for his signature. Vetoed line items shall be returned to Congress for reconsideration in the same manner as provided herein regarding wholly rejected legislation.

2. The Executive branch of the government shall enforce all laws enacted by Congress, and all provisions thereof, unless they shall be repealed by subsequent Act of Congress or nullified as contrary to the provisions of this Constitution by the Supreme Court or the States.

3. Signing Statements issued by the President upon approving legislation passed by Congress shall not nullify any portion of the relevant legislation, except in conjunction with the veto power granted herein.

4. No President may exercise the privilege of recess appointments for more than five positions during his tenure, nor shall the privilege of recess appointment be used for any member of the judicial branch, nor shall a recess appointment be used for any appointee already submitted to Congress or for any position which was already vacant on or before the day of their recess. Congress shall, within ninety days of their return from recess, either confirm or disqualify any recess appointee in the same manner as if the appointment had been made while they were not in Recess. If confirmed, the appointee shall continue to serve as described for recess appointments in the Constitution.

5. Executive Orders by the President are limited to implementation or clarification of existing legislation as enacted by Congress and must cite the portion of the relevant law which they seek to implement or clarify.

6. Within six months following the ratification of this amendment by the several States, all Executive Orders issued by any President, either current or preceding, and still in effect as of the date of ratification, shall be reviewed and revised according to paragraph five of this Amendment, and if they be not in compliance thereof, shall be rendered null and void.

7. No President may suspend habeas corpus, nor assume Emergency Powers, without the express consent of a majority of all members in both houses of Congress, nor shall any such consent exceed thirty days without subsequent consent of two-thirds of the entire membership of the House and two-thirds of the entire membership of the Senate, nor can the duration of any subsequent consent exceed a period of thirty days.

8. No President may disclose information affecting national security to any foreign nation or power, nor alter the classification of documents affecting national security, without the express consent of Congress.

9. No President may implement, by any action or order, any terms of a treaty or international agreement with any foreign nation or power which has not been ratified by Congress as provided in this Constitution.

10. No person appointed to fill a close advisory or other position with direct access to the President, and no person whose office permits the determination of access to the President, and no heads of departments, subordinate heads, or any other person whose functions include determination of policy, shall be exempted from confirmation by Advice and Consent of Congress, nor may Congress by legislation circumvent this provision.

11. All actions, papers, and communications of the President, and of his Office, and of the Executive Branch, are subject to review by Congress, but in instances wherein the underlying issue of such actions, papers and communications shall be determined by the Supreme Court to be vital to matters of national security, no details thereof may be disclosed by anyone holding an office under the United States to anyone outside of Congress, until such time as the national security impediment shall have been removed by Congress; but this impediment shall not be operative as a means of failure or refusal to disclose information in questions of misconduct or criminal activity.

12. The President may not appoint to any office anyone who has previously served as private legal counsel or private legal advisor to that President, nor may officers of the United States serve as counsel to the President in personal legal matters which may have occurred either before or while in office, nor may the President or anyone holding an office of public trust in or under the United States use public funds for private legal defense.

13. The immediate family of a President, including but not limited to his spouse or domestic partner, children and their spouses or domestic partners, and siblings and their spouses or domestic partners, shall not be eligible to seek the office of President, nor to hold any elected or appointed office under the United States, for ten years after that President shall have left office, nor shall the immediate family head any agency, hold any position, or perform any duty, whether compensated or not, which is empowered to make law or policy, during the tenure of that President.

14. Impeachable offenses of the President and all lesser appointed or elected officials shall include malfeasance and misfeasance, and shall include willful refusal to enforce laws affecting national security or to protect the covenant with the several states.

15. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions or the legislatures in the several States, as provided herein.”

Detailed and comprehensive. Would go a long way. I espcially like clause 14. Let’s push some of these ideas (maybe via the conservative media as well) towards lawmakers. I suspect even some in the GOP will resist limits on their power though…

Great reply (many great replies today). I think you nailed it; including the last sentence.

I guess the source of The One’s anti-Americanism is more obvious. Some people nurture their resentents very dearly, they tend them and water them carefully, building fences and walls around them so that nothing can uproot them. It’s another form of weakness too. It provides an ego-core for those who cannot make terms with life’s tragic nature. Those of us who believe that life, with all its suffering and chaos is good, orient around that goodness. The rest find strength in resentment. When a preponderance start to feel that way, they psychologically give up on freedom. They seek either to control (a form of bondage too), or to be controlled.

Combine that with the other disorders you mention, a shadowy council of wealthy, unscrupulous backers, and the power of the Presidency + a pliant Congress and this is the result. It could have been much worse if not for the Conservative media and the grassroots energy of the Tea Partiers, but its not over yet, and there are decades worth of bad policies to reverse or attenuate. November is just the first step.

I want to emphasize what Stallion wrote, for it bears repeating: The damage Obama has done will continue long after he is gone due to policies and more importantly, like minded bureaucrats, that are being and have been placed. Those persons that really run the various Federal Agencies. All you have to do is take a gander at how totally politicized the Department of Justice is at present, with it flat out ignoring voter registration fraud in 19 states, and you see how sycophant Assistant Directors can continue to cause havoc long after their Hero in Blackness has departed 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Like Clinton before him, Obama will be the gift that keeps on giving until the slime that he brought with him is expunged from Government wherever it is found.

Good article. It adds to the growing body of evidence (and growing perception) that Obama is simply not up to the job. Does this mean that we will have to suffer his presidency for two plus more years? Not if the voters first hand his party a stunning defeat in November (very likely) and the survivors of this debacle band with Republicans to turn Obama into a political non-entity. The interesting thing about the criticism that Obama is now getting is that if a person had written or voiced such sentiments a year ago he would have earned ridicule, and somewhat correctly, for it. Now, the ridicule of Obama is flowing like a large stream; in a matter of months we could see a river of disdain for him. Was this outcome predictable? Indeed it was.

really there should be no surprises here. obama the narcissist is doing what narcissists do. very predictable behavior.

I would really like to know who created this piece of crap.

…because he is not eloquent. his speech and speaking manner is poor.

someone (or group) with power gave him a pass and paved the way for him. he did not accomplish any of this with his own talent (spewing lies and other forms of bullsh!t isn’t talent, countless school yard thugs manage that). his personality alone could not have done it.

Pssst. George Soros found and secretly adopted him when O was under ten. Pass it on.

Ain’t politcs a grand way for us to spout? When GWB started provoking the left with his wars, they began to endless spounting about his personality, his smirk, his background, his alcoholic personality, his silver spoon, yada, yada, yada. I am impressed that people here are not going that route. Congratulations on your clear-eyed, common sense approach to the Obama problem.

Low hanging fruit, Dwhite? You can’t play with the intellectual big boys so you go for what you perceive as the easy stuff? That says a lot about your motivation. In fact that is what politicians like Obama do every day, isn’t it.

Only two mutually exclusive possibilities:
One, they talk about me as a dog would talk about me. Conclusion? They say: “Bow wow arf woof”.
Two, they talk about me as if I were a dog. Conclusion? They say: What a nice shiny coat, what a well-behaved animal, can that dog fetch the paper, what a flea-bitten and scruffy mutt.”

While I certainly agree with this (as I do all your stuff,) it still seems that the obvious is belabored ad infinitum – not just here, but in the public square generally.

Of course 0bama’s stunned and petulant that his Coming has not been universally greeted with astonishment and acclaim. He (Michelle too) has been carried around on a silken pillow his entire life, and learned probably before speech that his best bet was to manipulate anybody in his presence.

Of course race was a factor. I would unhesitatingly claim that race was the major factor, both in his choice by the Dems and the general election. What better candidate than one who, pace Ann Coulter, could not be criticized because of his superior victimhood?

0bama represents the perfect storm of over a century of “Progressive” propaganda, and anyone who doesn’t think they saw him coming long before BernienBill Dohrn-Ayers ever met him must be delusional. What we’ve all watched for the last year and a half was grotesquely apparent the first time he showed up in the dog-and-pony “debates” staged among Dem prospects in 2008. It was like watching Kerry in 2004 in the same settings – “Well, there’s the winner.”

Democrats all over the country have been reeling in disbelief ever since the inauguration at what is being done in the name of their erstwhile party. And as I publicly predicted then, the EmptyVee generation has been undergoing a rigorous and painful education in reality.

This guy gives the phrase “empty suit” a resonance previously unimagined, and unimaginable. To crib from Gertrude Stein re Oakland, “There is no there there.” He’s a spoiled and vindictive child, doing his utmost to foil even his owners simply because they’re adults.

The very astute Richard Epstein, professor of law at University of Chicago, noted that “I like Obama but I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.”

In response to the question, “How good is Obama’s mind?”, Epstein replied: “His mind is pretty good, but it is a clever ‘means-ends’ mind. He has never written a scholarly article in his entire life. ”

I am Obama’s age and knew many students like him: preppy third world wannabes and poseurs who loved to give the impression that they were both scholarly and engaged by namedropping authors like Fritz Fanon and Edward Said, both of whom Obama has cited as influences.

No real love of books, or of reading and thinking. All just a display for appearance’ sake.

The respected Thomas Lipscomb contends he didn’t write either of his books.

After Obama graduated from Harvard Law, he did not to seek work as a clerk for a prominent liberal judge, as most of his Harvard colleagues did. The work of a law clerk is demanding and it is doubtful that Obama was capable of completing such a challenge. Instead, Obama was hired by a Chicago law firm. But he didn’t do any heavy lifting there either. Instead, he spent all his time writing notes for his first book. As Allison Davis, a founding partner of the firm wrote:
Some of my partners weren’t happy with that, Barrack sitting there with his key board on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book.

Obama referred to himself as a “law professor,” but – in truth – he had only served as a Senior Lecturer
spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back, and he did not have many nice things to say about “Barry.” Obama applied for a position as an adjunct and wasn’t even considered. A few weeks later the law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put him on the payroll, and give him a class to teach. The Board told him he didn’t have to be a member of the faculty, but they needed to give him a temporary position. He was never a professor and was hardly an adjunct.

The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool.

According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. He also doubted whether he was legitimately an editor on the Harvard Law Review, because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).

The Doug Ross blog post is a telling reminder President Obama was never a professor. He was never even close to being a professor. Professors publish articles, compete for tenure, conduct research, win grants, and speak at national and international conferences. They attend faculty meetings where their expertise and skills are challenged in lively debate. In this world, the time professors spend teaching classes, creating exams and grading papers – the majority of Obama’s work as a Senior Lecturer – has only limited significance and prestige.

Obama’s insistence that he was a law school professor shows that he sought the status of being a law school professor…yet never proved he had what it took to compete among the academic elite.
a report from Carol Platt Liebau, managing editor of the Harvard Law Review at the time of Obama’s presidency there [emphasis mine]:

[W]hen he was at the HLR you did get a very distinct sense that he was the kind of guy who much more interested in being the president of the Review, than he was in doing anything as president of the Review.

A lot of the time he quote/unquote “worked from home”, which was sort of a shorthand – and people would say it sort of wryly – shorthand for not really doing much. He just wasn’t around. Most of the day to day work was carried out by the managing editor of the Review, my predecessor, a great guy called Tom Pirelli whose actually going to be one of the assistant attorney generals now.

He’s the one who did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he’d leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done.

It reminds me a little bit of my experience with him when he was president of the Harvard Law Review. You know, I hesitated to say a lot about this during the campaign because I really thought maybe it wasn’t fair. That maybe, finally, when he got to be President, this would be a job big enough to engage and hold Barack Obama’s sustained interest, because really, is there a bigger job out here?

He looks like the real thing when the camera angle is just so, but move a few feet to one side or another and it’s plainly obvious that there is nothing behind the facade.

It’s the greatest hoax ever. It can only be compared to the great coups of Lenin and Hitler….except that both of those maniacs actually went on to lead their countries. Evil as they were, they proved to be capable, if not expert, leaders of their sick movements. Obama is a monumental failure as a leader. No thinking person today would even consider him for their PTA board.

I dunno, are you trying to make the point that he is the typical Presidential-political type? Haven’t all of our recent Presidents eschewed heavy lifting on ANY type for image, blather, hand shaking? Who is the last President who worked hard in an occupation, harder than his political aspirations were high? Just saying.

Richard Nixon rose from nothing.
Gerald Ford had a successful college athletic career.
Jimmy Carter was an engineering officer in Admiral Zumwalt’s Nuclear Navy, an extremely demanding position.
Ronald Reagan had been an actor, union negotiator, and had saved many lives as a lifeguard.
Bush Sr. had been a naval pilot, company executive, and manager in the CIA.
Bush Jr. had been an Air Force pilot, business manager and baseball team owner.

The only two presidents who had never done much of anything other than ‘get elected to office’… were Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

an empty suit is an empty suit, regardless of color, teleprompter, or ideology. affirmative action works in academia and the media deals in images, but the real world values results. hopefully the empty suit will get “taken to the cleaners.”

Exactly. He typifies everything we’ve done wrong in this country. His whole life has been about getting ahead by racial privilege. Its tragic to see the ultimate price we’re paying for Affirmative Action mentality. Pray for the Republic.

Always a pleasure to read Dr. Hanson.
Obama’s lack of intelligence has always been obvious to me.
His petulance is exacerbated by the lack of continued success of his pompous speeches.
His ad libbing off tele-prompter displays his frustration at not being continually viewed as the saint he has elevated himself to be.

Sooner or later the hordes, proles, peasants ,rubes standing in front of the podium start to look up at the moon and say no it’s not square I’m pretty sure it’s round, yes look it’s round, I mean, you, the guy at the podium keeps on saying it’s square, (jobs created or saved, back from the brink, recovery summer, ….), but I think we are now convinced 75% of us (always a few who will think it’s square) start to storm the podium with pitchforks.
This is where America is at now, the universe of lies is exploding / imploding, whatever they do in space and the true American spirit that has been passed down generation after generation is boiling to the surface. The love of competition, liberty, western values cannot be stamped out by a con artist like Obama and his thugs.
I watched my daughters soccer game last night, watching the kids fight to win the game tells me all is not lost. You cannot take winning and wanting to be the best out of us. No matter how hard the left tries to make us all the same.

So, how long until he is heckled at appearances by people making barking sounds, or singing ‘You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound-dog’ or ‘Who Let the Dogs Out,’ or even just carrying signs with pictures of dogs?
This remark is coming back to bite him, I believe – and it might very well go on biting well after November.

…let this be a lesson to us all to be very, very, careful who we vote for….I admit to being a “None Of The Above” voter on occasion, but after seeing the astonishing differences between this Obama and the naturally understated patrician character exhibited by G.H.W. Bush [..forget that "taxes" gaffe] and the more earnest, earthy and sincere George W. Bush….I shake my head.

Also a bit further back, let’s all remember the belittled Harry Truman, the haberdasher from Missouri, who was uninformed about the then newly developing Atomic Bomb, who had in a very abrupt time-frame after having the sky fall on him at Roosevelt’s death, then exhibited the appropriate cojones to drop two of those briefly tested bombs on viciously imperial Japan which, in effect, ended the Second World War.

Everyone should review this history with his/her own selected bibliography……and, then, take a few steps back, squint…then…take a clearer look at the one now called Obama.

Having watched the video several times I think he is softly pronouncing the word “dog” as “dawg”. This, in my experience, is ghetto-speak for someone of shady character who has been caught out in one of his scams; such as a fellow who has been discovered cheating on his lady, “You Dawg!”, or someone who has gotten away with something that would result in trouble if he had been caught as in, “Dawg, we got away, do you believe it!”.

In this he is implying that his critics are suggesting that he has been running a scam on them, and they have become aware and thus have “called him out”. The fact is that they have and he is in a position of having brought a lecture to a knife-fight, lots of words without the hint of the ability to act.

There’s another aspect here as well. Obama seems genuinely surprised his efforts aren’t working. Enacting policies that got an “A” when espoused in a term paper at Harvard are rarely a good idea in practice.

The wonder is not that Obama is angry at criticism, but why he is so surprised in a weird “how dare they?” fashion.

Because “I Won” translates as: “I and my minions have earned the right to criticize any damn thing we want and everyone else is required to shut up.”

Joe Biden, for example, blurted out, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

When Biden was still a candidate for the ’08 election & Obama was an adversary, he said Obama was too inexperienced to be President of the United States…(one of the more accurate things ole Joe has said in recent years)

— the near cynical fashion in which he turns on not slightly, but entirely, different cadences and intonations to cater to particular crowds.)

The (contrived) upswing at the end of a sentence, a sort of breathlessness, is particularly irritating.

Professor Hanson brings litotes to life! One of the interesting features of con-men is their shamelessness. Thus, when Obama says, “They treat me like a dog”, this is not a lamentation but rather an attack on his attackers. Again, to Obama it’s all about their blindness to the radiance of Teh Won, rather than the validity of their argument.

I remember the 30 lawyers sent up to Alaska by Barry’s Backers to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin. So who provided the big bucks for this?

And does it seem just a little like what happened to his opponents for the Illinois senate seat? I get a tingling feeling up my leg that this guy has been groomed for a looooooong time to get into the White House, and groomed by those who don’t have the best interests of America in mind.

Why can’t we, the governed, see this man’s college records, the student loan records, and the birth certificate? Why was his social security number issued from Connecticut, a state where he never resided? Where is anyone who remembers him before his Harvard days?

Say, whatever happened to the Greek columns and the “Office of the President Elect” podium? All that’s missing is a rabbit out of a hat…

Everyone who teaches classes at an American law school is usually called “Professor,” whatever their status or title. (My understanding is that it may be different at European institutions.) So he’s entitled to the “professor” title in conversational use. And his credentials — he was editor of the Harvard Law Review — are perfectly adequate for his lecturer job at Chicago.

Great piece by VDH….as a native Chicagoan I can tell you it was the local media that boosted Obama to prominence and made all this possible more than anything else.

If you were to go back 12 years ago, the leading young black politician was Jesse Jackson jr. He had much going for him: name recognition, education, he was also very cool sounding, smooth as an pol and likable. BUT, he was not loved by the local media.

He did not have prominent reporters like Lynn Sweet of the Sun-times and others constantly working on building up his image. NO ONE enjoyed this kind of media love, but Obama.

I remember seeing Obama interviewed on a local program one morning – nothing special, other than the unusual name. He talked the liberal line pretty good, but no specifics. The interviewer, another liberal icon in Chicago, was just thrilled with him – it was obvious.

A few days later, an article appeared which quoted the TV interview and made it seem like Obama had come up with a cure for cancer!….Story after story, the local media built up a narrative that he was destined for greatness…

It seemed to me then, if this young man didn’t reach high office, he would be very disappointed….because the media had promised it to him for so long.

Dr. VDH – you hit it perfectly. I have been telling friends that Barack as merely moved from one job to another without ever being in one long enough to see or experience the results. Any top executive, when the going gets tough, has to either make changes or begin to at least fix things or they are the ones that are asked to get going. Obama has done none of this and when you try your best to make it good in a tough situation and are still asked to leave (or in younger days working your tail off and being cut from the HS basketball team), it can take awhile to get the funk outta your system. The internal negativity. Anger. Everyone is out to get me psychosis.

Whether it be not writing any articles as editor of the Harvard Law Review, throwing Annenburg money around or serving in the Illinois legislature throwing OPM around (and slowly puttnig the entire state at the brink of bancruptcy), he’s simply never had to actually to “do” something. I keep telling friend, in a fictional example that debating on whether to raise the state sales tax from 6% to 8% and then advocating for 7% doesn’t make you a moderate when you know that you have the votesto raise it to 8%.

Much like fixing schools thru Annenburg or a “constitutional law professor” who really did nothing more than a graduate teacher’s assistant, Obama has soaked up that praise and actually let himself believe that he is what they said he is and what he believes he is: The ultimate answer-man to any question asked.

However, part of this is Reverend Wright/Community Organizer/Chicago Politics at work. You cannot let any slight go unanswered, because if one goes by that is not addressed, then others will follow. Much like “hit back twice as hard” or “bring a gun to a knife fight” has popped up, it is a warning (that previously worked) not to raise another question. He doesn’t care right now about low poll numbers because his mentality has always been, “in a short time, I’m movin’ on up. Movin’ on out. These people just don’t get it.” The problem is not that Obama can’t run for president of the world. The problem is that Obama, for once in his life, will have to be in a job for more than 3 1/2 years and will have to answer like all chief executives the question of “put up or shut up.” In the last 20+ years of his life, he’s never had to face this task.

I truly believe he will tap Hillary for 2012, let her run things for 4 years (ala’ the alledged Bush model) then claim not only did he break the colored barrier to the presidency but also the female barrier (should she win in 2016).

Re: “…no further adulatory confirmation for just being Obama….”
Oh yes there is! It’s the job Obama’s been after from the start; the absolute best job/position in the world: fame, fortune, “importance,” and absolutely no responsibility nor need to accomplish anything — ex-President of the United States. It is, in fact, the perfect continuation of his career to date a lifetime to do nothing after a lifetime of doing nothing and still have some folks think you’re something.

I had a Professor in Chemistry who was a Golden Boy: Stanford undergraduate, Cal Tech for PhD in Biochemistry, Chairman of the Dept of Chemistry at a young age, Head of the college of science, etc. Married to his high school sweetheart. In early middle age, she left him for another man and he couldn’t cope. He committed suicide at age 42. He never had Plan B, because Plan A always worked.

Mark Twain said that it is best you get one’s failures early in life–I don’t remember the second half of the quote, but it was clever.

If Obama is of this ilk (a star like my Professor), we could be in for trouble. A president who becomes more isolated, more entrenched in his own version of entitlement, more convinced of his need to become a savior… Righteous Indignation is a hard nut to crack. In Barrack’s case, since we really don’t know his basic identity and basic convictions, we can’t predict where he may draw a line in the sand.

His race may in fact be the defining motivational criteria of his behavior. I’ve never thought of it as: “What would a Black Man do, if he had his finger on the trigger of the world’s largest nuclear stockpile?” I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope the racial divide is not that extreme, but right now, I don’t know.

The second place alternative on my list of Obama’s potential reaction to adversity; is his socialist, progressive dogma. I believe this dogma is long past its prime, and is on a steeper curve of descent than all other current political doctrines, which makes it a set-up for extremism. What if he clings to his belief in the proletariat; continuing to believe himself to be a rejected messiah of the working man? Would such a man do something rash? Under those circumstances, would anyone recognize craziness before it is too late?

I do know one thing about the culture of Islam, and it can be seen clearly today on the streets of Cairo. It is not good when someone with a cultural background in Islam begins to compare himself to a dog.

Hadn’t thought of this scenario; in fact, haven’t seen anything like it anywhere on the internet. It has sent a shiver down my spine, because I truly believe that he is a combination Marxist/Muslim with emphasis on the Muslim. They are extreme idealists as you know.

I’ve seen and owned and rescued lots of dogs. Pres BHO does not have the standards or the credibility or the honesty of a dog and should not be mentioned in the same sentence as a dog. Let us no longer talk to himm as we would a dog. Herafter refer to BHO as a lesser animal – although I can’t think of one right off hand ? Suggestions please . How about Cock -of-the Walk ? No, chickens deserve more despect too. What to call this con artist ? How about “he who must be walked and neutered” ? So many choices and so little Kibble,,,

Obama specifically and most “progressives/liberals/socialists” in general it seems to me to fit the philosophy of post modernism. Once you assume that they adhere to the post modernistic philosophy, most of the statements and actions like this make sense to me.

obi is the one who started referring to himself as a dog – i.e. his family getting a “mutt” like him. He’s also referred to himself as a mongrel. Projection is nothing new for him – he’s done it as long as he’s been on the public stage, and probably far longer.

Muslims do consider dogs unclean, and to compare someone to a dog is a grave insult.

Ever since he bleated this latest silliness, I’ve been thinking about how I talk about dogs. There is no way, in my 10 or so fine relationships with dogs who have been part of our household over 50+ years, that I have ever despised any of them and said so. I have never been aware that any of them tried to burn my house down around me. No dog I’ve owned has ever called me names and mocked me.

There is absolutely NO reason that I would EVER talk about any dog the way I talk about him. I despise him. He’s destroying the United States of America. He mocks Christians. He thinks normal Americans who work hard, take care of their families and try to improve their economic are selfish, greedy and awful people. There is NO way I talk to him the way I talk to my dog.

I do know one dog I could liken to obi. Some type of hound belonging to a former neighbor. (the whole street was glad to see that dog go.) He was the *stupidist* dog I’ve ever come across. He’d walk out and sit down in the middle of the road when he saw me coming, staring at my car as I was honking to get him to move. He had this expression of “huh? did you want something?” Since it was a narrow road with deep ditches, I didn’t exactly have the option of going around. I’ve run over smarter opposums.

(why did the rooster cross the road? to show the opposum it could be done.)

As usual VDH hits the nail on the head. Of all people Mr. Obama should avoid presenting himself as a “victim” because he just isn’t a good enough actor to play the part. Bill Clinton was a master at theatrically presenting himself as the helpless victim of the evil forces of the opposition. (Remember the Bible he was carrying around during the Lewinsky Crisis?) He was such an obvious fraud and such an incredible ham that everyone just sort of went “Awwwww” and gave him a pass.

Having ridden to office with an (undeserved) reputation for dignity and gravitas, it does Mr. Obama little good to demonstrate petulance. I suppose we can’t be surprised since he has spent his life more as a lab specimen than a member of the public. He has been cut off from the outside world by private school, attendance at elite universities and the coccoon of Chicago machine politics. None of that prepares you for the adversities of real life.

Also we must once again recognize that G. Bush, for all his faults, was a graceful and patient man. Right from the jump in January 2001, Mr. Bush was subjected to a coordinated media carpet-bombing unlike any ever seen in U.S. history. (Remember the short lived series on Comedy Central entitled “That’s My Bush?”) He never publicly complained about the apppalling attacks on his character, his integrity and even his family. The press quite properly considers the Obama daughters off-limits. They had no problem however with beating up on the Bush girls.

VDH is eloquent and incisive as always with this post, but I would argue that it has sadly become all-to-easy to criticize this president. It will take the long view of historians to fully disclose the magnitude Obama’s ineptness and debasement of the office. However, we are not yet at the midpoint of this horror show and, despite aspirations for the upcoming fall elections, I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom of this descent into “Grand Failure.” Obama didn’t experience a deprived youth resulting from his mixed race heritage; rather he was spoiled by an endless series of social promotions precisely because of his heritage. He is the synthesis of affirmative action and political correctness.

What we don’t know about the President:
his real name; his religion; his religion on his birth certificate; his biological father; who wrote his books ; who paid for his private school, college and law school; his grades; his courses; who helped him release the record of his two senate opponents; his IQ.

What we do know: his only experience has been as a community extorter while being an OPM spender supersized. He doesn’t like America or Americans, our Constitution, our states, our faith and wants dissmantle all of them. He is not the president of all the people, but only of the Marxist Noam Chomsky crowd. He is a liar and a smear artist extroidinaire. He agrees with Reverend Wright. He thinks all white people are rascists. He supports terrorism: why else give Hamas almost a $1 billion dollars and let the Iranians build a bomb and claim there is no war on Islamic extremists? He had no plan for anything but just a Marxist ideology. He is Van Jones but happens to be President and not a czar so he can’t be fired very easily. He is corrupt, totally cynical and totally political, a gifted liar in the Goebbels/Hitler big lie school. He doesn’t like our military and thinks we need to unilaterally disarm, both conventional and nuclear arms, he thinks NASA shouldn’t be in space but instead should be helping the Muslims feel better about themselves. He doesn’t think America has stood for freedom and doesn’t feel we should or are any better, or have ever been any better than anyone else. In short, he is a frightenlingly, treasonnously dangerous threat to not only this country but to free people and prosperity the world over.

Obama is to the presidency what JaMarcus Russell was to the Oakland Raiders.

For those who mercifully haven’t been Raiders fans for the past 3 years, JaMarcus Russell was the #1 pick of the 2007 NFL draft, for a team that desperately needed a franchise quarterback after four losing seasons. But as soon as the draft was over, Russell quickly demonstrated that while he liked the idea of being thought of as an NFL star — specifically, the astronomical salary ($39 million guaranteed), and the fancy material possessions and lifestyle that it bought — he had no interest whatsoever in doing what it took to “be” an NFL star.

He missed some team meetings, fell asleep in others, spent little time in the film room, disappeared so fast from the locker room after games that the air would seem to crackle, and his style of play was typified when he’d drop back to pass, stand around like a statue until the pocket collapsed, and then fumble the ball when a defensive end or linebacker came from his blind side and creamed him.

Remember the TV commercial featuring the post-game interview with the black quarterback whose response to every question was to blame others? E.g., when asked whether his six fumbles contributed to the loss, the reply was “Not if somebody else would’ve picked them up.” Finally in exasperation the interviewer asks, “But what about ‘There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’?” To which the response was, “Ain’t no ‘we’ either.”

That was JaMarcus Russell.

Obama is the same sort of character, only in the political arena instead of the football stadium. He sure likes the baubles of the office — the private jet, the bodyguards, the military men he despises having to salute him, the champagne-and-Weygu-steak party nights at the White House, the adulation of the pre-selected crowds at speaking events, the fawning media and the supermarket magazine cover photo-shoots, being called a “god,” the female reporters all but throwing their panties and hotel room keys at him — but shows little interest in doing what it takes to “be” the president.

After three years, the Raiders finally gave up trying to salvage JaMarcus Russell, paid him his $39 million and cut him halfway through his six-year contract.

Somehow, I suspect that the American People are going to do somthing similar with Obama.

Did Jamarcus Russel pass and rush for a Tarp II, a stimulus, and a health care package?

Maybe O is more of a Dan Fouts or Dan Marino; both passed for a lot of yards, but couldn’t win the big ones. Reducing unemployment (or winning re-election?) would be winning the Super Bowl. Fans of the other teams, would still say that he stunk.

Not to discredit Dr Hanson’s fine work and the [mostly] wonderfully literate responses, I grow weary of analyzing this pathetic charlatan. I mean, this sort of thing was de rigueur in the salad days of his tenure. We had to cling to something to assure ourselves he was — as one above described — a chimera, a cypher, and empty suit and NOT the second coming as his cohorts of sycophantic lib HopenChange leg-tinglers described.

But, at 20 months, it’s old news. I get it. Move on.

Of course, I do not mean that VDH should abandon this line of essay nor should you all stop commenting. It’s just that one longs for the time when this unaccomplished dolt will become insignificant.

I do not watch the videos posted of his speeches and remarks any more knowing them to be just more of same — clumsy, hopelessly inept, decidedly un-presidential. I just want to spare myself of the wave of revulsion that will undoubtedly result.

It is not the flailing that he does now, on the eve the Democrat’s purported bloodbath ~~ brought on largely because of his non-existent chief executive skills. These are only passingly important. They are but appetizers for the feast that is to come: what he says and does after the November holocaust.

Along with the incredibly over-reaching Peloi and the terminally incompetent and bumbling Reid, he has constructed the morass that the Democrat party now dwells in. He is bereft of strategic ability and his tactical skills are non-existent. Even into the run-up to their supposed Armageddon, he remains clueless and reactionary. The knee-jerk proposal of blowing $50 billions of our cash on yet more “infrastructure” programs is nothing more than a thin broth of already failed, too-late talking points in a futile effort to save his party. The hip, too-cool for words, droppin’ the “g” speaking style, shirt open at the collar is a cracking and fading veneer covering what the nation is more and more coming to regard as a snake oil salesman, a carnival barker. Vaporware.

We are tired of him and will continue to do so.

His numbers — at 41% today — should consistently break the magic floor of 40% some time later this year or in January. He will then enter into a vicious cycle of flapping his lips, coatless, tieless, droppin’ his “g”s appearances and we will be more and more underwhelmed — causing him to redouble his futile efforts..

“See, I’m campaigning like a champ, my opponents speak ill of me – I must be doing something right”. But you can tell that underneath the tired rhetoric, his heart is not really in it. Deep down he’s glad to have a way out. He realizes now that he bit off more than he can chew, and a GOP victory in November gives him an easy way out. A form of political suicide, but not quite. It may even turn out to be a good strategy since a GOP led congress gives him a bit of breathing space too, and a bit more wiggle room in some ways.”

Yes, all true and I also really believe that he is looking forward to “being the party of NO” and using thousands of pens vetoing everything that the republicans try to do or undo.

That is easy work and requires no effort to speak of and allows him to give his “presidential like” teleprompted speeches with each flourish of his mighty veto pens.

Yes dear Sir, I also will be having a party but it will have to wait until the 3rd or so because I’ll be working the booths. I have also been walking the streets, driving the back roads and pounding on doors for the last three months and will continue to do so, speaking to the Americans who will listen and dropping of reams of propaganda for them to read and lists of websites for them to visit. I’m only home right now to gather more ammo to give out and eat a bite.

“See, I’m campaigning like a champ, my opponents speak ill of me – I must be doing something right”. But you can tell that underneath the tired rhetoric, his heart is not really in it. Deep down he’s glad to have a way out. He realizes now that he bit off more than he can chew, and a GOP victory in November gives him an easy way out. A form of political suicide, but not quite. It may even turn out to be a good strategy since a GOP led congress gives him a bit of breathing space too, and a bit more wiggle room in some ways.”

Yes, all true and I also really believe that he is looking forward to “being the party of NO” and using thousands of pens vetoing everything that the republicans try to do or undo.

That is easy work and requires no effort to speak of and allows him to give his “presidential like” teleprompted speeches with each flourish of his mighty veto pens.

Also let us not forget that he serves another master. She the mighty and non-forgiving hater of whites and all that they stand for.

Michelle, the lover of fine things and hater of failures or failed peoples or of a failed husband.

Obamathefailure, will be saddled with her until he buys her off and she willing chucks him and takes the kids and leaves him in her hateful wake.

Yes dear Sir, I also will be having a party but it will have to wait until the 3rd or so because I’ll be working the booths. I have also been walking the streets, driving the back roads and pounding on doors for the last three months and will continue to do so, speaking to the Americans who will listen and dropping of reams of propaganda for them to read and lists of websites for them to visit. I’m only home right now to gather more ammo to give out and eat a bite.

calling Obama an empty suit gives real empty suits a bad name … In almost every case a real empty suit has a real job at a real company … they may be fast talkers in their current position but almost always they worked their way up to that position with real effort of some sort … they are usually in over their head …
This guy has never worked hard at anything … his signiature skill at playing hoops is so overated as to really be a myth … he never played organized b-ball past high school and that was at a private school in Hawaii …
At 53, slightly overweight and at 5’10″ I’ll bet I could shut him down on offense any day of the week … (assuming the Secret Service wouldn’t beat me too baldly for a few elbows to his ribs)

I think you are wrong, Obama isn’t discovering accountability for the first time. He has been avoiding it all of his life. He is very skilled at avoiding responsibility, which explains his ‘present’ votes as Senator, and his inability to complete his autobiography on time.

So no, I do not give Obama credit for being thrust into a new environment where he would be found accountable. He chose the environment, and he thought, just like any ‘liar’ does when he lies, that he would not get caught. Again, there is no reason to give Obama any credit — being elected President is an accomplishment, but if it is done so surreptitiously there is no excuse.

It is unlikely that Obama will be able to cure himself of his illness, which is a very bad case of narcissism. His narcissism is as common as the cold, but he will always try to pretend that he is different. His ego only finds joy when he sets himself apart from others, a classic inferiority complex. This is how history should remember Obama — a common egoist.

someone took an interest in him from an early age. I think his “present” votes were ordered by whomever had paid for him to go to columbia and harvard and was setting him up to get their reward. His records of everything had been carefully hidden, and a persona cultivated before he entered politics.

By voting “present”, there is no record for anyone to get an idea as to his political positions – and harder to use against him when the stakes got big.

We live in an overcredentialled society in which the large, nationally influential institutions, beginning with the universities are enthusiastically race norming. Small wonder that many African Americans are gaming the system. This system was designed for African Americans to game.

Obama’s Minister, Jeremiah Wright, came to the game late. Likewise his friend the Honorable Reverend Louis Farrakhan. The first began life as hospital radiology technician, the second as a calypso singer with the stage name Calypso Louie.

Today Wright and Farrakhan and many others like them are respected theologians and community leaders, reverend honorable and sage. Rich in honors and degrees. Likewise the green folding stuff decorated with portraits of dead presidents, much of it transferred to them by craven politicians from taxpayer’s pockets. For their Honorable Reverends’ work with youth. With drug addicts. AIDs victims. Pregnant teens. The homeless. Civil rights. No metrics, quantification or accounting required.

It is worth remembering that not very long ago, a front office African American was sufficient display of political correctness for a large organization, be it corporate, institutional or government bureaucracy. The search wasn’t difficult. Any nice looking, well spoken African American would do. The position might require a university degree but Human Recources could usually be relied upon to find candidates.

An especially memorable administrator who fit the bill in those early days of race norming sat in his executive office at HUD watching daytime television from nine to five while the agency in his charge was utterly raped and reamed.

Minor chicanery by today’s standards. Today the front office African American has been bumped up to the executive suite. And this African American doesn’t have the good sense to count his blessings and lie low in front of his executive TV. This nice looking, well spoken and richly credentialled African American has notions, God help us.

Having brilliantly gamed the system and left the Wrights, the Farrakhans the Jacksons and the Sharptons in the dust,this African American imagines he got there on merit.

yes he’ll be in charge of the U.N. thinking that it has influence. By then the Conservatives will be completely in power in the U.S. because Obama has even turned me, a lifelong liberal into a conservative. If that has been able to happen the dems are in serious trouble. The U.S. will of course by then have made the U.N. irrelevant. Obama won’t ever know this, and so will enjoy his fantasy King of the World job. This will be good. He won’t be able to do any damage. But he won’t know that he can’t do any damage. brilliant. God Bless America.

I made that observation in the Summer of ’08, and have seen that analogy made in editorials back then. Indeed, an analogy that keeps cropping up independently like that has legs because it has some truth to it.

Sadly, we can’t make Obama go away anymore than Chauncey Gardiner could make bad people and things go away by clicking his remote.

Prof. Hanson forgot the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Obama was the chairman of the board of a nonprofit that gave away over $100 million with absolutely no results to show for it. As the final report concluded, “the Challenge had little impact on school improvement and student outcomes, with no statistically significant differences between Annenberg and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain, classroom behavior, student self-efficacy, and social competence.”

Shades of the Stimulus! Anyone surprised he’s treating the federal treasury the same way?

Factually speaking, my spelling always gets erratic when I get emotional. But I hope my point is clear. There is no shame in making a mistake, only in not taking the time to fix it. But you didn’t vote for him? Your fellow citizens did, so have a little honor for the system and clean up the mess. It’s like picking up someone elses litter on the street. It’s a thankless job if you want thanks, and it only gives you dirty hands… unless you happen to like living in a cleaner, better world, and are not ashamed to work for it.

Getting rid of a sitting President is not analogous to picking up litter. We cannot unelect a President, and we cannot force Congress to impeach him. So, are we supposed to get our hands dirty and form a million person mob to storm the White House, overcome the Secret Service and the Marines, and toss Obama in a dumpster? Why bother? In a few years, we’ll elect someone nearly as bad and continue the seemingly irreversible trend of turning the USA into the opposite of what the founding fathers intended.

The LIAR in Chief has insulted my dog. If he thinks for ONE minute that I think of him as a dog, he has, once again, VASTLY over rated himself. The man is despicable. He is truly a legend… in his own mind. Now, a RAT maybe…

“his thin-skin touchiness seems inexplicable.
…
Yet Obama’s petulance, I think, more likely derives from a certain surprise — leading to anger — that originates from novel and sudden demands for accountability. Quite simply, no one has dared question Obama before — much less press him for deeds to match his mellifluous words.”

No doubt personal psychology and history play a role, but it should not be over-emphasized. The key to Obama’s behavior is that he is a sincere, consistent Progressive, as much as he can be.

Since Progressivism is a philosophy wholly opposed to every value that sustains human well being, it’s almost inevitable that the calm, reasonable appearance must soon give way to snarling.

Excellent article as usual, Professor. I have just one minor quibble. You wrote:

Note here that Harry Reid seems to have been the first serious observer to publicly describe one of Obama most off-putting characteristics — the near cynical fashion in which he turns on not slightly, but entirely, different cadences and intonations to cater to particular crowds.)

I don’t think much of Obama, but in fairness, he’s hardly the first Dem politician to do this. Both Clintons and John Edwards got all aw-shucks- folksy and began droppin’ “g’s” from the ends of words right and left any time they gave a speech below the Mason-Dixon line. At least Slick Willie and Horndog Johnny (or should that be Slick Johnny and Horndog Willie?) were actual Southerners. It was just as transparently phony and revolting when Hillary did it as when Obama does.

I’ll say. As I’ve mentioned before, if Ann Dunham had hooked up with a garden variety, home-grown, white Marxist, the world wouldn’t have given their boy Barry a second glance. There would have been no toney prep school, no Columbia, no Harvard Law, no Harvard Law Review, no book deal, no political patronage, no coveted speaking slot at the Democratic convention. Biden had it pegged. (Not that white Barry Dunham couldn’t have accomplished all those things, but he would have had to have been quite an exceptional man and we all know Barack Obama ain’t that.)

Now that I’ve had time to read through all the fine comments, I can’t help but think of the recent commentary from Mr. Tingles:

This guy, Barack Obama—not to get too basic about it -did everything right. He studied hard in school. He obeyed the law. He raised a family. He took care of his family. He was an excellent student. He was on the Harvard Law Review. He did every—he went through the democratic process. He didn’t go out and make a lot of money on Wall Street. He gave himself to his community. This guy is almost pluperfect, and they don‘t like him?

It’s time to get rid of Affirmative Action and it’s time to bug our elected officials to start treason hearings. They aren’t doing much of anything anyway, if you watch C-SPAN. Clinton was up for impeachment for far, far less than what Obama should be up for. And even Nixon resigned for less damage than what’s going on now all the way around. Oh, but wait. First the elected officials have to have a committee meeting to decide just exactly what actions in their minds constitutes treason. They don’t get it they can read up on the Naturalization and Immigration Act and find crimes against America there or in other Fed laws that have been perpetrated upon the citizens of this country. And of course Islam has to be recognized as not having ANY separation of Church and State so therefore and whereas, little Constitutional religious rights seeings as the doctrine is primarily hate and violence.(read the book). Which reminds me. If Obama went to Madrassas as a little kid, that pretty much wrecks it. In Islam, if your dad is Islamic, that is your lineage, like it or not. Because to leave Islam is to bring a threat or action of death upon yourself for being an apostate. How about lying about the truth of the Founding Fathers meaning Jefferson, Franklin, et. al, about Musslemen? How about lying about the truth of the Barbary Coast wars and what led up to it and the torture and horrific treatment of our various ambassadors and elected officials back then? How about all this insidious crap about racism and Islamophobia? There are a myriad of reasons to start impeachment proceedings against Obama but our elected officials are by and large too lost in their own various cesspools of PC/multicultural insanity to see any sort of logic thought process. Even Hillary has fallen to something that reminds me of when dudes get anally punked out. I used to have respect for her. It is quickly vanishing. The whole sad thing is that the little kids are the ones who will be dealing with the worst of this mess going on now and I don’t just mean economically.

Great article Mr. Hanson. Excellent. I think Obama did accomplish something in the racial/racist realm. No, we’re not ‘post-racial,’ but surely the conversation on race that some have always cried out for is here, even if they’re in denial since it’s obviously not going in the way they wanted. The ‘race card’ has never been emptier, and that’s a good thing.

Obama has truly made an mess of this country. ObamaCare. Unequal treatment under the law (the Black Panther voter intimidators. Putting us on the road to bankruptcy. Going to the UN about our civil rights abuses (suing Arizona for trying to secure its borders). Failing to appreciate the indecency of the Victory Mosque. Filling every new Stimulus provision with billions heading to the labor unions. Which is just a start at detailing his intentional acts to destroy this country.

Now Obama says he’s upset when the American people, at a 70% rate, agree, “this dog don’t hunt.”

victor, to sum it up: Narcissist Personality Disorder. Look it up, you’ll see barry’s photo. This comes as no surprise to the 48% that didn’t vote for him. We saw it ( an so did every shrink in the country) way back during the campaign; a 3rd rate carny huckster with NPD of epic proportion

“After all, it was not just Obama’s appearance or skin color or cadences that so impressed Biden and Reid and won over liberal Americans, but his politics as well that earned him an exemption not accorded even to an equally professional appearing Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice.”

Oh so true. Reminds me of Rush’s point about NAACP – they are really the NAALCP – National Association for the Advancement of LIBERAL Colored People. Color matters, yes; but not unless you also hold to liberal / progressive / Marxist philosophy.

Many times we hear that blacks who don’t engage in the language, politics, victimhood of their community or those who work hard in school are called “Uncle Tom”s and the like. Given that Obama is a “mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” and was educated at some “top” schools, it’s interesting that he wasn’t considered by blacks as an “Uncle Tom” / traitor to his community. It has to be that his skin color as well as his politics has given him credibility in the black community.

“Yet Obama’s petulance, I think, more likely derives from a certain surprise — leading to anger — that originates from novel and sudden demands for accountability.”

While I think that is true, I also think that as a liberal / progressive / Marxist, he doesn’t know anything but victimhood and his politics demand that he always show there to be a villain and that things are so bad, they require gov’t intervention. Dems by definition must have problems big enough to require gov’t intervention; they aren’t ever going to make things better; au contraire – they need things to get worse so there is a need for them to “take care of it.” They either don’t get that they make things worse, or they are such power-hungry tyrants they have a NEED to be in control of everything. Besides, Obama has nothing left but to play the race card (as old and tired as it is already); the best way for him to do that is to play the victim to a bunch of white, racist bitter clingers.

Oh my goodness gracious! What are you folks going to do after november 2010? Who do you propose to run the country after november 2012? Sarah Palin is the quintessential narcissist, are they going to run her? She makes BHO look humble.

What is it that you want from Washington? BHO would be far more popular had he not caved to the Bankers, Insurance companies and the elite Imperialists. Once again he shows an inclination to placate the cultural elite by extending Bush tax cuts to those who do not need it and have no skin whatsoever in the fight for foreign oil.

Agreed, BHO is not doing well. Not a bad guy, he just doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to do what is right for We The People.

President Obama is a petulant child. He’s not getting his way so he’s throwing
temper tantrums, denouncing his opposition as prejudiced against him, making
the accusation that they “treat me like a dog.” That apparently was not in the
scripted speech but was an ad lib insertion. That insertion is most revealing.
He cannot address the issues except on his own terms. When the “health care”
bill was under consideration in the Senate he offered to meet with a select group.
He allotted to himself much more than half the acheduled time “because I am the
President.” Opposition members were allowed to speak, but they received no
response from the President. They might just as well have mailed in their
statements.
President Obama is inadequate for the job. He is childish. He wants his own way,
not because it’s the right way; no, he wants his own way because it’s his way.
He is incapable of addressing the issues in an intelligent exchange of ideas.

Professor Hanson, I enjoyed your eloquent and insightful essay very much. Obama in a way is the ultimate poster child for victims of affirmative action. Poor fellow.

I am tempted to draw a comparison between the fall of Obama and the fall of Icarus but there are a couple of troublesome discrepencies. Both fell from amazing heights it is true, each ignoring the pleas from wiser voices far below (in the case of Icarus, from a loving and devoted father). But Icarus’ rise to lethal altitudes was accomplished by his flapping his own wings; Obama rose on hot air (provided by an acivist and negligent journalist class); the only thing Obama actually flapped was his tongue. The end result, however, is about the same, with the exception of the depth of Daedalus’ sorrow.

With apologies to Ovid, Obama in his recent appearances, reminds me of a man frantically flapping his arms to the sickening realization that they are no longer covered in feathers.

“His themes were winning over adherents rather signature accomplishments.”
do you mean “winning over adherents rather than achieving signature accomplishments”? either way, that’s pretty harsh! keep it up! don’t let the rules of basic syntax stop you! people who speak and write clearly and correctly are probably educated, and evil!

Fantastic article sir! This perspective has been a bit jumbled in my head until you so succinctly compiled it for me in this article. I believe that a large portion of America has been pushing for decades to “Affirmative Action” a black man into the White House. Now that they have succeeded in doing so, I believe that the performance (or lack thereof) of this man will put the merits of the Affirmative Action concept squarely back into the national spotlight. And I am hoping that the next big push will be to eliminate it altogether. Thus it is quite possible that this president will unwittingly bring about a truly post racial equality!

A friend of mine made a profound statement some 30+ years ago. Today, it applies to Barack Obama. My friend said, “The problem most people have in life is they believe their own baloney” (he didn’t actually say “baloney,” but you get the drift). If that doesn’t describbe Barack Obama, nothing does!

“But enough speculation over motives for the origins of Obama’s strange and growing petulance. All that matters for the country is that the current president of the United States seems surprised that as our chief executive he is earning scrutiny not previously accorded him — and that he finds that demand for accountability both exasperating and abjectly unfair. Thus this week’s latest ‘like a dog’ whine.”
Interesting little science fantasy story about Obama’s miraculous lack of abilities. (On a sidenote, will every criticism of Bush be recycled now that Obama’s president?) But here’s another, more reasonable explanation about his “like a dog” “whine.” The Republicans in the Senate have used the filibuster a record number of times since Obama became President. And these are the same people who used to brand people who disagreed with Bush “traitors”!

VDH points out elegantly the lack of paper record of any significant achievement by Barack Obama. He fails to mention the apparent lack of family connections: Was there ever, in living memory, a US President, in office, in which his only apparent family connections are with his own nuclear family unit. Where are the members of his parents generation (aunts, uncles, cousins) and his grandparents generation? Even in Jimmy Carter’s case, the press showed some interest in Billy Carter.
Even more peculiar is the apparent lack of any real press interest, either from the right or the left, in these absences. Have we all become subject to mass hypnosis?

For those of you not familiar with illinois politics, I STRONGLY suggest you read the article from the link below. It shows how he used and abused the system to make a name for himself and was just as much an empty suit in illinois as he is now, despite people glowing over his term.

There isn’t a person alive who has firsthand knowledge of more than a sliver of Obama’s life.

His mother, father, grandmother and gradfather are dead. His childhood mentor is dead. He moved multiple times in his childhood, so there are no childhood acquaintances with any continuity. His remaining great uncle and American cousins only had spotty contact with him. His Indonesian step-sister only knew him as a baby. His African relatives only had a few days of intermittant contact. He has no friends who aren’t political acquaintances. Nobody at Columbia remembers him. His Occidental roommates now live in foreign countries. Nobody he knew at Harvard will talk about him. He has sealed virtually all of the written records of his past.

Anything that any living person knows about his development is an isolated patch of aging memories. He has even carefully positioned his “auto-biography” as a “post-modern” mix of memories and fiction, so he has plausable deniability for every event or opinion in it. When the lies are discovered, he simply says that the event was invented to forward the narrative.

Why, it’s almost as if it has been all planned out to give him carte blanche to claim anything at all about his past.

as a hyper-arrogant being with a delusional narcissistic personality disorder, of course he’s surprised. he lives in a world where everything he says is right, everything he does is great, everyone idolizes him, and he’s the coolest guy in the room. why would he not be surprised. he hasn’t gotten the memo that the rest of us have; that he’s actually a two bit wanna be dictator, a neophyte, a clueless progressive on economics, a sheep on foreign affairs, an impostor to the throne, etc…..

i have been so baffled regarding the mystery of who exactly is barrack obama…i read d’souza’s piece today and i am more enlightened…why dont we know 1 thing about him during college….why is that…all we have is the info that he went to columbia and he the “harvard law review”…thats it….i know that ridicule surfaces whenever his background is questioned…in 60 years ive never known less about a president.

When the Democrats and their MSNBC cheerleaders look around and wonder where all the “enthusiasm” and “grass-roots support” for Dear Leader went, they will be wondering essentially where I went.

I voted for Obama in 2008. I did so because McCain went to great lengths with TARP antics and his “we’re all Georgians now” schtick to convince me he was not much of a Republican, and still was quite bitter – unproductively so – regarding the Russians.

What I liked about B.O. was the chance that this fellow – a constitutional law professor – would have the grasp of material, connections, and competence to set the listing US legal ship back to even keel when it comes to the Patriot Act disaster of his predecessor. I’m talking the warrantless wiretapping, the joke that is the DHS, perpetual limbo for Gitmo and the fate of the morons interred there. The complete lack of legal formalism – still after ten years – on what to do with people who are caught engaged in or suspected of terrorism was something I thought Obama would address, really care about.

I had an expectation of carbon-crier cap n’trade, health-care tinkering, bailing out the UAW, all of that. But McCain was the same on those issues and I figured Obama had the better shot at addressing what I outlined above.

I never made a worse vote in my life. Obama has been an utter failure at the legal questions of our new Nat’l Security State. Outside of imitating Bush’s policies, Obama has been caught like a deer-in-headlights with Gitmo. He’s mailed it in on everything strategic…China, Iran, DPRK. He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on in AfPak. I remember seeing him give a presser with Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow back in 2009 and realizing that without a teleprompter or a sympathetic press that guy was lost. Stumbled on questions, said “uhhhhhhh” about 90% of the time sound was coming out of his mouth…just a stick in the mud. How does he keep the dog-and-pony show of him being some provocative intelligence when you see him unscripted and he’s so…average on a good day?

BHO was a hoodlum, pot head and (community organizer).
He had a opportunistic comprehension of (dependent) type
people he learned to capitalize on, manipulate and
OWN. He delusionally confused his popularity among this cult of followers with mainstream American’s.
He delusionally believed he held the keys to the white house if he could increase his base numerically; then,
home free in the WH where he, Rahm, Anita, and et al could ” Fundamentally transform America.” It ain’t
workin because he ain’t real….

The criticism of Mr. Obama by honest intellectuals, as opposed to the pseudo intellectual left, is nothing less then withering. I agree with many of the comments above mine that there is no way Mr. Obama seeks a second term. This work business is just too much for him.

Dr. Hanson, once again you provide ample evidence of why you are my single favorite columnist of all time. Once again, you have hit the nail on the head.

It truly boggles the mind to think that an entire nation (or a majority of it anyway) could be suckered into electing to the presidency someone so laughably inexperienced and unqualified. We are paying dearly for that folly, and I fear we may pay more dearly still in the two years to come.

Fortunately, we can begin to reverse this grievous error in judgment in just six more weeks.

I have thought about why BHO is so secretive about his previous life and have decided that there is only one answer…he is in the witness protection program! What else could it be unless he is ashamed of his past. What a loser he is!

Is it just me or is Obama acting like he was promised a specific outcome? Repeatedly we hear this total disbelief that Americans would not fall in lockstep behind his agenda of socialism and redistribution of wealth. Did he really believe he was that charismatic? Americans, at least outside liberal bastions, are a pragmatic bunch. We work for a living and generally do not squander our income. But what happened in the last ten years is that normal Americans had been lured into an idea they really could leverage middle class incomes into Oprahesque opulence. The rhetoric of the Left for years has been “You Are Entitled.” Anyone who watches Oprah has seen this play out. Everyone is magically entitled to the best of everything. Unfortunately, unlike the recipients on Oprah’s show, there is no fairy godmother ready to pick up the check. Obama promised much to his core constituency-unions, urban dwellers and minorities. In doing so he really believed he could strip middle class Americans of their incomes via taxes, fees and creeping socialism. But as I said before, Americans are a pragmatic bunch. Most of us realize that there will need to be an uptick in order to make headway in this economy. But we also know that spending more is not going to help. And what does Obama offer at his most recent Labor Day speech? Fifty billion more in spending. And by the way, if spending is the key, why did Congress hold back stimulum money instead of applying that money to extension of the unemployment program?

These are just the questions now, there are countless more regarding Obama’s past like how come he is the first editor of the Harvard Law Review never to write a single article? Or how are we supposed to know that the baby allegedly born in Hawaii is the same child as the boy shown in school uniform in Indonesia. How are we supposed to know where and when he was born when someone (Soros?) has gone to a great deal of expense to shut up those information avenues? So in a way, Obama IS like a fairy-we just have to clap our hands and he believes in himself. And I guess for him, that’s enough. Sadly, for us, it’s too much.

I wrote of Barack Obama shortly after his inauguration that “it is only a matter of time before Obama will have to stand unscripted and un-tethered on the world’s stage.” I followed with the thought that, “should he stumble badly, his handlers will run for immediate cover, pulling back the curtain as they flee. Will the president be left free standing or dangling without direction with no one to pull his strings?” The latter seems to be the case and Mr. Hanson has penned that fact elegantly.

Every Obama ‘meeting with the American People’ has ALWAYS been with Union types, Government employees.

The economy’s anemic whereas private businesses – who represent a VAST majority of the country, are in hibernation-type mode because of this wingnut’s anti-market antics and he still doesn’t seem to ‘get’ it?

The stimulus money has been a BIG PAYOFF to the aforementioned adoring usurpers.

Lastly, this ‘Party of No’ accusations thrown at the Republican Party. Our budget is nearly quadrupled from last year, whereas the budget is TENFOLD from 2007.. the same year Democratically Controlled Congress took the reins. Coincidence? Can you imagine of the Republican Party having stars in their eyes like Obama suckups, voting ‘Yah’ for everything? The debt would be..

Don’t ask Harry ‘the 4th most powerful person in the country’ Reid. He’s not responsible for his state’s abysmal unemployment numbers. Nor is he responsible at all whatsoever for the economic collapse. These parasites need to go..

Obama says “they’re treating me like a dog”: I hear Buddy, the White House dog has a life most third world children would envy: A warm place to sleep, good medical care, regular meals, treats and lots of attention. I think Obama would benefit from a trip to the vet: He’s full of worms and I suspect he needs a rabies shot.

Does this Administration and the entire Progressive movement even realize that it is their blatant hyper-partisanship that has America totally rejecting the narrative of the Democrats entire political agenda.

I grow very weary of Obama’s furled-brow lectures, the moral self-righteousness of “The Professional Left” and the manic-driven angst of the media elites.

I’ve never witnessed a President who seems to relish the opportunity to demonize entire sectors of the community – a man who constantly plays the partisan himself, and then proceeds to diminish everyone else for their advocacy.

In their zeal to pass the most transparently flawed and corrupt pieces of legislation in modern American history, the Democrats have crossed a threshold and they now own the resentment of a disenfranchised American Electorate. It is a watershed that was demonstrated at the polls in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, and it will be the legacy of the Democratic Party for years to come.

I’ve never witnessed a President who seems to relish the opportunity to demonize entire sectors of the community – a man who constantly plays the partisan himself, and then proceeds to diminish everyone else for their advocacy.
—————
Really? This is a guy who was attacked constantly by the right BEFORE he ever did anything as President. Why he would want to defend himself seems easy enough to see. I am amused by the way someone like Hannity, who attacks Obama ALL THE TIME appears to be offended when Obama “attacks” his opponents, supposedly because he is not being Presidential. Obama has made plenty of missteps, but you guys have been so against him from the day he took office, that your criticism seems like reflex, rather than reflection…and that goes for VDH as well. And all the over-the-top stuff about what an utter fool and incompetent he is, makes the critics seem irrational.

According to Recovery.gov, the President’s own website which accounts for the stimulus funding (ahem), of the first $787 billion stimulus bill, a full $275 billion has gone un-spent as of August 27, 2010. And of the $512 billion of stimulus already spent, only $18.5 billion (less than seven percent) has been paid out by the Department of Transportation on these “shovel ready” jobs.
Let me repeat that: less than seven percent has gone for the promised transportation infrastructure.
(h/t to Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Staff)
Yet let’s take a look at what Democrats said about the massive $787 billion in so-called stimulus funding. Wasn’t that first trillion dollars supposed to be about bridges and roads and infrastructure?

President-Elect Obama — November 28, 2008 Press Conference: “We are going to have to make sure that we are investing in roads, bridges, other infrastructure investments that lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth. A lot of that goes through our states and our local governments. And one of the things that we’re going to also want to make sure of is that as part of our economic plan, that we are fast-tracking some of these projects.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi — January 7, 2009 Forum on Economic Recovery: “While there are many components to this economic recovery and jobs package. Make no mistake: this is not your grandfather’s public works bill.
Associated Press — January 11, 2009: “Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama’s argument that more road money would address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”
President-Elect Obama — January 16, 2009 in Ohio: “We’ll put nearly 400,000 people to work by repairing our infrastructure – our crumbling roads, bridges and schools. And we’ll build the new infrastructure we need to succeed in this new century, investing in science and technology, and laying down miles of new broadband lines so that businesses across our nation can compete with their counterparts around the world.
Vice President Biden — February 17, 2009, Signing of Stimulus: “Starting today, our administration will be working day and night to provide more aid for the unemployed, create immediate jobs building our roads and our bridges, make long-term investments in a smarter energy grid, and so much more.”
President Obama — February 17, 2009, Signing of Stimulus: “Because of this investment, nearly 400,000 men and women will go to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our faulty dams and levees, bringing critical broadband connections to businesses and homes in nearly every community in America, upgrading mass transit, building high-speed rail lines that will improve travel and commerce throughout our nation.”
Of the over half-trillion dollars Democrats have already spent, only $18.5 billion has been paid out by the Department of Transportation for infrastructure. (How much of that was spent on the propaganda road signs?)
There remains $275 billion of the first “stimulus” money allotment unspent. The President has yet to explain why we need to borrow billions more to spend on infrastructure.

I don’t think about Obama in terms of being a dog. I think in terms of him being a skunk.

He stinks.
His condescending behavior stinks.
His policies stink.
His frequent vacations and golf outings sti9nk.
His wife and her Spanish vacation stink.
His appointees stink.
His lapdog behavior around foreign tyrants stinks.

Obama’s pique is part and parcel of his exaggerated sense of entitlement. Having succeeded without achievement his entire life, he is now miffed that Americans have the temerity to actually expect him to accomplish something beneficial for America.

America elected Obama because he succeeded in tapping America’s spirit of negation as well as its desire for a better future. Thus, he encouraged Americans to reject the Bush legacy, while simultaneously offering himself as the candidate of hope.

While this strategy worked for Obama in the presidential election, it has become a spectacular failure during his presidency. Where Obama promised hope as a candidate, he has delivered despair instead as the economy continues to crater and a once hegemonic America is now suddenly vulnerable.

Hence, the proverbial table has turned on Obama. He has become the object of the nation’s negation as most Americans now repose hope in the Republicans because Obama’s policies have failed.

Though he attempts to recapture his old magic, his once persuasive sophistry now rings hollow. He may continue to blame Bush and call the Republicans the party of no. However, these claims no longer resonate because most Americans join the Republicans in saying “no” to Obama.

Incredible ! , After having read every single comment, not one person stuck up for Obama ! Not even the usual trolls that interject an occasional cheerleader fart. Maybe the best indication of a November sweep ever. Lots of hatred and disappointment, no love.

Of course he is thin-skinned. He assumed, and yes it was naive, that he would get a long honeymoon period like Bush did, that would go on for years. He assumed that people would realize that the Republicans caused the Depression, and wouldn’t blame him for the fact that it was not fixable in 19 months. He assumed that his magnanimous gesture of not investigating Bush’s many crimes, such as his studied inaction before and on September 11th and his lying about Iraq planning to nuke us to launch his [Bush's] unprovoked war, would be rewarded by the Republicans giving him a chance and being fair. He was wrong about all these things; Republicans, like rabid dogs, simply see magnanimity as sign of weakness. Now he is starting to wake up and realize that the Republicans, influenced by the Bush crime family running them for most of the last 22 years, have evolved into a criminal enterprise, more similar to the Communist Party than to any real American party. Like the Communists, they demand party line votes on everything. Like the Communists, they betray the country, then accuse THE OTHER PARTY of treason. Like the Communists, they rewrite history constantly in order to deflect the truth. For instance, they claim “Bush protected us,” ignoring the dozens of warnings he got in the 4 months leading up to 9/11 that a large terrorist attack was coming at the end of Summer 2001. They claim The Iraq War was defensive despite the fact Bush simply killed 400,000 innocent people. None of them did anything to us. They claim Iraq has been liberated, although it is run by crooks, and Christians and Jews have had to flee the country, because their churches and synagogues were being bombed, their women raped, due to the chaos that Bush unleashed. Saddanm Hussein protected all religious groups in Iraq, he told Muslim extremists, “if you so much as vandalize a church or synagogue, you will go to prison”, and they knew he meant business. Yet Bush attacked Iraq based entirely upon his own lies, and removed Hussein, and ignited this firestorm of destruction — and America got NOT ONE ADDITIONAL BARREL OF OIL FROM IT. And a trillion $$$ was wasted on this disaster.
Obama should never have protected Bush from investigation and prosecution. Now he is seeing the Republicans’s “gratitude” for his forgiveness.

You are wacky in your condemnation of GWB, but spot on about the rabid right’s compulsive attack on Obama from before his first day in office.

Then, soon after that, here was their EXPLICIT reasoning; If we can defeat healthcare we will have crippled his Presidency. Once that had been stated so plainly, why in hell would anyone assume that there was going to be a good faith discussion?

The concept of loyal opposition really does not exist on either side any more.

If Obama is not neutralized this November we are doomed period. Prepare for the protection of your loved ones as it will disintegrate to every man for themselves. I am not kidding. God help us. God damn the people that vote him in.

Funny thing is that god need not do anything, they choose damnation with both arms out, blissfully weepy and without a clue, and tell you how stupid & mean you are, Cassandra, to rain on their parade. We saw it all happen in ’08.

Most of us with decades of experience in the world of performance reviews, merit promotions and “managing up or out” problem performers have seen people like Obama many times before. They are always very well dressed, very confident, highly articulate and extremely ambitious. But they are also temporary: these people are able to smell their own stink ahead of others and manage to move before their resumes suffer. It may seem incredible but they don’t know how to work! They’ve never been assigned a task they hated but had to do anyway no matter how many times their efforts were rejected.

I saw one of those fops self-destruct once. He couldn’t find another position before it became widely known that he was an empty suit. He took the inevitable and harsh criticism badly, refused to accept any suggested improvements, instead lashing out in a passive/aggressive manner like a big headed toddler. Finally, he created a series of very significant problems along to way down. In short: he took a lot of good people with him on his dive to the bottom.

I hope the Exec Branch has systems in place to stop-loss as much as possible of whatever is salvageable from this Fop in Chief. I feel bad for people who placed so much faith in him. I agree with Prof. Hanson and know the Great White Libs were voting more for themselves than him anyway, but there were also millions of tragically stupid people who voted for him and they’ll not handle his failure well. The resulting damage could be generational in scale.

Of course, he’ll have those toilet floaters in our leftist media to cover his exit. Hmmm … I wonder if W might have been a top player with a little support from his party or that awful media we shoulder.

I’m not entirely sure the ‘faithful’ will ever, ever admit to their delusion and thereby come into a closer relationship with reality. I come from a family where a generation worshiped FDR until their deaths (and amidst the ruin of their city – Detroit), and where one still occasionally hears excuses for Carter. Folly, ego, vanity – all have a long, stupid tail.

The democrats ingored your concerns for 20 months about your jobs. Why should you listen to them now when they’re concerned about their jobs?

Lets hear another sanctimoneous lecture from Obama about what we should and shouldn’t do while he jets around on AF1 for date nite, spends up to 10 million dollars of our money for his personal amusement with the private WH concerts. (yep, that’s youuur money he’s spending for his personal amusement.) He lectures you about your SUV and the furnaces, while he uses AF1 to fly his stupid dog out to him on vacation.

We just keep hearing how we are bad, we need to have “shared” sacrifice, while he lives high on the hog on your dime.

1 in 7 is struggling to feed their children, and 1 in 6 is under/unemployed, and Obama thinks hammering the oil and gas companies for his “mini tarp” is a good idea, and his wife flounces around Spain incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to us, and Obama complains about being given a question on yet another one of his vacations.. . . . .

And you wonder why the nation is starting to hate Obama?

Give us another lecture Obama – tell us again how we have to sacrafice while you complain “Comon guys, we’re bying shrimp.” because you don’t want to be bothered with questions about the nation while you’re on vacation. . . .

King Louis and Marie Antoinette probably got it right before the guillotine fell. Obama is a petulant childish narcissistic moron – and the democrats followed him like lemmings.

I don’t think Obama will ever get it, even on January 20, 2013 when he’s told to pack his bags.

It’s unfortunate that Obama doesn’t understand how disgusted this nation is getting with him.

His incessant vacations, the idea that he cares about us is waning. His narcissism has been evident in everything he has done.

“I won.” His response to alternative ideas to deal with the economic emergency. Wowww, now there’s a sound reason huh? Because it’s your idea, that’s all that makes it viable, huh?

“I didn’t get elected to help a bunch of fat cat bankers.” Obama obviously forgets he’s only 1 of 3 equal branches of government.

“The only thing standing between you and the pitchforks is me.” Comment to the banks during a meeting – obviously showing his belief that the rest of us were heathens while he was the only person who can control the situation.

“You’d think they would be thanking me.” His comment about a tea party rally – he thinks you should “thank” him for the tax cut crumbs he threw on your plate. Money that you earned, you should thank him for letting you keep more.

He barged into a meeting of leaders in Copenhaaaaaaaaagen he wasn’t invited to. (How dare they have a meeting of world leaders without Obama, huh?) As the Chinese sent a lower and lower emmisary to meet with Obama because he insulted them so much.

How about the way he treated BB Net the first time? Dismissed him like a delivery boy – Obama left to go eat his dinner and left BB Net hanging. . not treating him like a peer, an equal.

In response to a question about never having run anything, he arrogantly claimed he ran his national campaign? Then we find out later it was a mess.

Running off to collect his little nobel trinket – an award that is “all about Obama” while the rest of the world had made schedules around copenhaaaagen, but Obama wouldn’t give a definative schedule until the last minute.

Obama has arrogantly and repeatedly shown he thinks he is a great leader, before he did anything.

You’ve had example after example of Obama and his self centered narcissism. It’s all over the place. I’m sure I missed examples.

Why, now, are we so surprised that he’s having a national temper tantrum because the world isn’t the way Obama thinks it should be?

Most of our presidents come to us having had leadership experience. Having worn the consequences, and stood the heat of those executive decisions, etc. Understanding the weight of those responsibilities.

Now that Obama has to actually account for his actions, as a leader does, he’s having a tantrum.

In business we have all seen the Obama ones before its called out running your mistakes and lack of results. They keep a resume floating at all times and never stay in one job long enough to be held accountable. Obama is now surprised that anyone took his speeches serious and actually expect results. To Obama they are changing the rules of the game and he has no place left to run so he is pis-es.

His narcissism in chasing his agenda, despite other democorats telling him this could be a 1994 – and his comment “You’ve got me”. . . .he lead them into an Obama “Jonestown.”

He ignored the nation, the polls from day 1 said economy/jobs. For 20 months, he lead the democrats against what the nation wanted. . .”clinical obsession” with health care reform. . .telling the nation watering the lawn while the house burned down was the answer to the crisis. (Remember him telling everyone reforming health care was the key to the recovery? Ignoring the nation?)

Do you think that any democrats who survive the upcoming tsunami are going to care a whit about Obama? Seriously, do you think a single one of them will care about Obama given he didn’t care about what he did to them?

Democrats will become the republicans’ new best friends forever.

Obama is term limited – Hopefully sooner rather than later – but they’re not. He put them all on the chopping block despite the warnings his aides gave him about the polls… . .the Time article noted this. He just ignored the voters. Period. He ignored other democrats and arrogantly dismissed their concerns – “You’ve got me.”

Yeaaaaa. . . how’s that workin’ out for you now, huh?

So if the republicans only pick up 39 seats, what makes you think they won’t have a much larger working group with the democrats who realize Obama doesn’t care about them at all. . . .it’s “all things Obama” for Obama. Even Pat Caddell noted most presidents realize the nation is larger than their individual presidencies. But with Obama, it’s always about Obama, that’s become obvious at this point. Cadell’s words. A democrat pollster said this about Obama. (shocker, huh?)

So. . . .how much “allegience” do you think Obama will really have on the hill after he casually decicded they were all expendible in pursuit of “all things Obama”??? Think his “don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother” will actually bother them now? Won’t they tell him “goooooooooooooo ahead, who cares.”????

And as Obama vetos bipartisan bill after bipartisan bill, how many of those democrats will help him going into 2012? Hmmmm? Think that one through.. . .they’ll be bragging about working with the republicans, they’ll tell their voters they’re suddenly listening to them. . . .think Obama as an obstructionist will be rewarded with support from these democrats?

Uh huh. . . . .”don’t think we’re not keeping score, Obama.”

Obama lead them into an Obama “Jonestown” of his own making – because for Obama, it’s only about Obama, and what Obama wants.

Temper tantrums aside, it’s really sad for a nation to have such a narcissist in the office, when we really need a leader.

Obama likes to think of himself as a watershed event for our nation. He’s about to find out, he was only the catalyst for the watershed event.

Illinois, Calif, New York, New Jersey, all Blue States that have been controlled by Democrat Majorities for years and long enough to try there taxing, spending and vote buying pandering to Unions and illegal Aliens and seeing the results, all are bordering on bankruptcy.

Now Obama is following the same blueprint on a vastly bigger scale for the rest of American using 100,s of billion of the simulate money to reward Democrat supporters and to keep the under worked and overpaid union in jobs and buy welfare votes!.

The same mult-trillion dollar con job Obama is attempting, by giving Amnesty to the invading horde of Criminal & Uneducated Prolific breeding third world parasites to buy millions of welfare votes for the Democrat party with American citizens tax money.

With the future & further goal of turning the USA into a Spanish speaking Third World Slum modeled on Mexico but controlled Lock, Stock & Barrel by the Socialist/Democrat party Dictatorship of the United Sates of Mexico!

And we truly may be turning a page to a new era, when “class envy” now applies to the way righties talk about public service employees. Is it the dawning of the Age of Sagittarius? Being one myself, I am thrilled that I lived to see this day.

Even by his normal standards, this is a shameful piece by VDH. The chorus of support, of course, is to be expected but equally shameful – any of you heading to Gainesville by any chance? The suggestion, actually the only substantive point, that our President was given a life-pass due to his race is despicable, even for white supremacists still crying over the necessity of sharing power with non-Europeans. Is this payback for the fact that all of you supported a president so obviously lacking in cognitive ability? My guess is that the prime motivation of this and all of your outrageous slander is the shock at having lost the White House – yes, you righties think you have a divine right to rule and the fact that a more educated and many times more thoughtful Democratic President has been voted in simply drives you bonkers. The woodwork has certainly been extremely busy with the departing loons since 2008. Never mind that more private sector jobs have been created in the 18 months since our current President took power than in the eight years of W’s tenure. Never mind the facts, let’s just make things up and speculate about them! Muslim from Kenya, hand-picked by the secret World Government, in thrall to our enemies and ready at a moment’s notice to deliver our country to the jihadis. Oh and Obama never achieved anything on merit but was given a pass because of his skin-color. Very clever.

FabianB I have a masters degree (It’s the same amount of education as his law degree( and for the past twenty years have worked cooperatively with only black and Latinos without any trouble. I just think everything he does is 180 degrees from what I believe in (capitalism) So shut your race bating up>

Fabian B I have a masters degree (It’s the same amount of education as his law degree) and for the past twenty years have worked cooperatively with only Blacks and Latinos without any trouble (hundreds of them). I just think everything he does is 180 degrees from what I believe in (capitalism) You have the liberal disease of stating anyone opposed to him is a racist. It’s old and tired.

Fabian B I have a masters degree (It’s the same amount of education as his law degree) and for the past twenty years have worked cooperatively with only Blacks and Latinos without any trouble (hundreds of them). I just think everything he does is 180 degrees from what I believe in (capitalism,limited government, ending the welfare dependant state etc) You have the liberal disease of stating anyone opposed to him or his philosophy is a racist. It’s old and tired.

Fabian B I have a masters degree (It’s the same amount of education as his law degree) and for the past twenty years have worked cooperatively exclusicely with Blacks and Latinos without any trouble (hundreds of them).Greenwich Village (eitht blocks from the building blown up by Bill Ayres girlfriend,Diana Oughton) and didn’t know one Communist, Unlike Obama who surrrounded himself with Communist, Socialist and 60′s radicals.I grew up in I just think everything he does is 180 degrees from what I believe in (capitalism,limited government, ending the welfare dependant state etc) You have the liberal disease of stating anyone opposed to him or his philosophy is a racist. It’s old and tired.

Fabian B I have a masters degree (It’s the same amount of education as his law degree) and for the past twenty years have worked cooperatively, exclusively with Blacks and Latinos without any trouble (hundreds of them).I lived in Greenwich Village through the 50′s to 70′s(eitht blocks from the building blown up by Bill Ayres girlfriend,Diana Oughton) and didn’t know one single Communist, unlike Obama who surrrounded himself with Communist, Socialist and 60′s radicals. I just think everything he does is 180 degrees from what I believe in (capitalism,limited government, ending the welfare dependant state etc) You have the liberal disease of stating anyone opposed to him or his philosophy is a racist. It’s old and tired.

Your response is exactly what is to be expected from a liberal. Anyone that critizes Obama is called a racist. Well I grew up in Greenwich Village during the 50′s through 70′s and didn’t know one single Communist , unlike Obama who has surrounded himself with nothing but Communists, Marxist and 60′s radicals. My house was eight blocks from the building Bill Ayres girlfriend, Diana Oughton blew up and died in in 1970. I went through the same amount of college (getting a masters) and for the last 20 years have worked exclusively with hundreds of Blacks and Latinos.I don’t have a problem that Obama is Black. I have a problem with his philosophies and politics.I believe in limited government, ending welfare dependancies, capitalism and freedom. Care to match that?

You make my argument much more compellingly than I could – our President’s parents were communists; Obama and his economic team with people like Larry Summers, Timothy Giethner, Christina Romer are anti-capitalists; and, our highly educated President as good as urinates on our Constitution. Reasonable, fact-based, educated comments? Not quite. By the way, liberals invented political liberty and limited government.

Take care and do yourself a favor and stick to PBS and NPR if you must get your information from electronic media. Reason is not dead there.

“By the way, liberals invented political liberty and limited government.”

Classical liberals did; the term was later hijacked by those with very different beliefs, such as those who would espouse the benefits of limited government, and state-controlled media within the same comment post.

If NPR and PBS count as “state-controlled” media then you need to get out more. Like your friends in the Republican Party, perhaps you should spend more time in Europe and then tell us how horrible life is there and how ignorant are the people. Along with John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, not to mention the framers of our Constitution, I’m a very proud liberal – modern liberalism is an advance on the classical version, one that includes the lessons of history. Perhaps you folks have to suggest that liberalism is communism, socialism, fascism etc… because the real history of liberalism – its anti-communism, its insistence on civil liberties, its commitment to social justice and concern with equality and the environment – is too complex for the kind of political campaigning you insist on – with lies and fear-mongering at its core. I won’t deny it hasn’t worked. The hatred and ignorance glorified above is testament to that.

“They treat me like a dog” …is actually a line from an old “jimi hendrix” song. Its an old story, …u guys would never remember it anyway. Anyway, dont be so paranoid, this is a President you must get used too…sooner or later. Nice article, thanks.

Obama is an liar by habit. He seems very comfortable lying and and does not appear to have any remorse at all. One day he will give an account of himself before God as we all will, and being President of the United States will not matter one bit at that time.

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